> ..'^^ • 






e M 



i.^-^ 












•f>- 

















• •• 



O" • 



v^ ••' aV ^'^- 



e » » 

















> ' • 






■'•nAo* 


















n5 





•^~ 




WILLIAM TENN, "THE QUAKER SOLDIER. 

From Line Engraving by S. A. Schoff, in possession of The Historical 
Society of Pennsylvania. 



Quaint Corners 



ri 



In Philadelphia 



WITH ONE hundred AND 
SEVENTY-FOUR ILLUSTRA- 
TIONS, By JOSEPH PENNELL 
AND OTHERS Jt ^ jt ^ 



REVISED EDITION 



JOHN WANAIVIAKER 

PHILADELPHIA NEW YORK 



.s 



Copyright, 1922, John Wanamaker 



DEC -5 '22 

5CU692530 

■Vi-O \ 



PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION. 



Although this book was first issued in 1883, it con- 
tains so much in it that is neither transitory nor ephemeral 
that it was thought wise to send it to the press again, 
since it has been out of print for some years and a con- 
tinuing demand seemed to warrant such a move. 

It is natural that such a volume should in parts bear 
the signs of age, and of containing statements no longer 
true, for Philadelphia, along with the rest of the country, 
has made immense strides during the last forty years. 
Among other things it has doubled its population and 
very nearly doubled the number of its buildings. But it 
has been believed best to allow the different chapters to 
remain as they were originally wTitten, but to supplement 
them with a few words in this Preface. One of the 
original chapters has been displaced by another that out- 
lines the development in the neighborhood of City Hall 
Square, a locality that had only begun to be a center of 
interest in 1883. 

Originally written for one of the best weekly magazines 
ever issued in the United States, Oiir Continent, the 
various chapters were written by writers who not only 
knew their Philadelphia, but had a deep sympathy with 
their subject. They appeared in the pages of that pub- 
lication during 1882 and 1883. At the close of the series 



vi PREFACE. 



they were collected and issued in the form in which they 
now appear under the title, A Sylvan City; or, Quaint 
Corners in Philadelphia. 

It was a lively, entertaining, informative book, and 
gave an excellent idea of Philadelphia, its history, its 
institutions, and its own peculiar viewpoint, as they then 
existed. Moreover, the narratives were charmingly illus- 
trated by some of Philadelphia's most attractive young 
illustrators, among them Joseph Pennell, who was then 
at the entrance of his great career. 

But, it would not be the part of wisdom to reissue the 
volume without making any reference to the changed 
conditions, or to the wonderful change in statistics that 
have taken place in the meantime. The Historical Society 
of Pennsylvania has long since left its cosy, if contracted, 
quarters in a small building on the lot of the Pennsylvania 
Hospital on Spruce Street, and now commands the finest 
modern building for a historical society that can be found 
anywhere, at Thirteenth and Locust Streets. 

The Hahnemann Medical College was displaced from its 
home on Filbert Street by the Reading Railway when the 
road was brought down to Market Street to a magnificent 
terminal. The Post Office, described as new and wonder- 
ful in 1883, has long ago outgrown its quarters, and the 
whole method of distributing the city mails has been 
changed. Motor trucks carry it from and to railway sta- 
tions and from and to the fifty branches in the city. 

There have been changes in Education, both in Medical 
and in the elementary public Schools, to say nothing of 



PREFACE. vii 



the reorganization of Catholic Parochial Schools and 
Business Colleges that place Philadelphia at the head in 
educational affairs. The Public Schools have an attend- 
ance of about 245,000 pupils, and these are taught by about 
6500 teachers. 

At least fifty per cent, of the school buildings have been 
erected within the last forty years, and now pupils are 
taught in the most modern of school structures, and plans 
are drawn for many more ; some of them will be under way 
before this can be published. There is one Normal School, 
three Schools of Observation and Practice as adjuncts to 
it; eleven High Schools, where there were only two in 1883; 
four Junior High Schools, with another about to be 
built; one Industrial School, one Trades School, and 196 
Elementary Schools. The Evening Schools maintained 
by the local "Board of Education include 21 Elementary 
Schools, Eight High Schools, and One Trades School. 
Not only has popular instruction gone so far in the ele- 
mentary training of the young, but more than 250 scholar- 
ships to universities and other higher schools of learning 
are each year provided for industrious and intelligent 
pupils. 

In 1883 Philadelphia had one university. It now has 
two, the University of Pennsylvania and Temple Uni- 
versity. Together they have enrolled on an average of 
15,000 students. In Medical Education Philadelphia has 
never lost its leadership in this country. A few years ago 
the standard of admission to them was raised to an extent 
that may have caused a loss in mere numbers, but has so 



viii PREFACE. 



far resulted in the graduation of young men and women 
better fitted for their new profession. There are two Den- 
tal Schools, one a part of the University of Pennsylvania 
and the other of Temple University. In addition, there is 
the Thomas Evans Dental Institute, a part of the former 
seat of learning, which has a fine graduate school of 
dentistry. The Medical Schools are five in number, and 
include that of the University of Pennsylvania, the oldest 
in the United States, Temple University, Jefferson, 
Womans, and the Hahnemann. 

The chapter on Libraries is another one that could not 
go forth without having a word said in explanation of the 
immense strides made by this city, especially in the line 
of extension of its great Free Library system, the largest 
of its kind in the world, and having a circulation greater 
than that of any other library in the United States, if, 
indeed, one might not go a little farther, and include the 
world in this statement. 

It was founded by a bequest of George S. Pepper, who 
in 1889 left the sum of $250,000 as a nucleus for the pur- 
pose. City Councils have annually since 1891 appropriated 
money for its continuation and expansion. The late 
Andrew Carnegie gave $1,500,000 for the erection of 
branch libraries, and twenty-two such branches have 
been erected and are in operation. There are eight other 
branches, one of them the E. Josephine Widener Branch, 
at Broad Street and Girard Avenue, and in 1923 it is 
expected to have finished the great Central Library of the 
system on the Parkway at Nineteenth Street, which the 



PREFACE, ix 



City of Philadelphia is erecting. The library has more 
than 550,000 volumes and about 300,000 pamphlets. It 
has a valued and instructive Department for the Blind 
which has been of great use, and was one of the first 
activities of its kind to be organized on an extensive scale 
in this country. The average circulation of volumes of the 
whole Free Library System is more than 3,000,000 volumes 
annually. The new Central Library will have shelf room 
for 1,500,000 volumes. 

Many of the Quaint Corners in Philadelphia have 
given way to the inevitable during the last forty years, 
but their history remains the same, and those who love 
their Philadelphia and those who know and knew it the 
volume should continue to instruct and entertain. 

Joseph Jackson. 



co:n'te^ts. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. A Quaker Soldier. Helen Campbell, . . 9 

II. The City of a Dream. Helen Campbell, . 43 

III. "Caspipina": The Story of a Mother 

Church. Louise Stockton, ... 75 

IV. Old Saint Joseph's. Elizabeth Robins, . 109 

V. The Old Philadelphia Library. Louise 

Stockton, 129 

VI. Quaker and Tory. Helen Campbell, . . 167 

VII. The Philadelphia Post-Office. Edwin 

A. Barber, 207 

VIII. City Hall Square. Joseph Jackson . . 229 
IX. Public Schools. Eliza S. Turner, . . 257 

X. A Master Builder. Hele7i Campbell, . . 295 

XI. Early Abolitionists. Helen Campbell, . 333 

XII. Medical Education. Helen Campbell, . . 367 

XIII. The Bettering-House and Other Chari- 

ties. Louise Stockton, . . ■ . . 397 

XIV. The Right to Bear Arms. Frank Willing 

Leach, 437 

XV. Stephen Girard ; Mariner and Merchant. 

Louise Stockton, 472 

xi 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

From Designs by Joseph Pennell, Alice Barber, Charles H. 

Stephens, Colin C. Cooper, Jr., Walter M. Bunk, 

Mary K. Trotter and others. 



PAGE 

Portrait of William Penn, . . Frontispiece. 
Chigwell Grammar School, . . . .11 
Interior of Chigwell Grammar School, . 15 

Wanstead in Essex, 17 

Swarthmoor Meeting House, . . . .23 

SWARTHMOOR HaLL, 29 

Newgate Prison, 33 

Penn Coat-of-Arms, 37 

William Penn's Burial Place, . . .45 

Weather Vane from Penn's Grist Mill, . 49 
Gloria Dei (Old Swedes') Church, . . . 51 

Seal of Penn's Colony, 55 

Penn's House in Letitia Street, . . .59 
Slate-Roof House — Original Appearance, . 63 

Slate-Roof House in 1868, 67 

The South Room— Slate-Roof House, . . 71 

St. Peter's Gate, 75 

St. Peter's Church, 77 

In St. Peter's Churchyard, . . . .83 

The Font 87 

Among the Bells, 91 

The Pulpit, 95 

Christ Church from the East, . . .99 

Bishop White's Study, 103 

xiii 



XIV 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PAGE 

Old Tombstone (Tailpiece), .... 108 

An Old Confessional, 109 

Gateway (Old St. Joseph's), .... Ill 

Old Lamp — St. Joseph's, 113 

Doorway of the Fathers' House, . . . 115 

St. Mary's Churchyard, 119 

Among the Graves^Holy Trinity, . . 123 

Evangeline's Grave, 125 

Clock at St. Joseph's (Tailpiece), . . . 128 

Minerva in the Library, 129 

The Old Library, 130 

The New Library, . . . . . .131 

A Corner, 133 

The Old Lantern, 135 

Venus — From the Rush Collection, . . 137 

The Loganian Library, 139 

Request Box, 141 

The Ridgway Library, 143 

Rush Memorials, 147 

The Philosophical Society, .... 151 

Franklin Institute Library, .... 155 

Stairway at Historical Society, . . . 159 

The Bay-Window, 163 

The Old Bartram House, .... 169 

John Bartram — His Bible, .... 172 

Tool-House in Bartram's Garden, . . . 173 

Hamilton House, Woodlands Cemetery, . 177 

On the Wjssahickon — The Old Livezey House, 180 

Garden Gate of the Livezey House, . . 181 

Morris' Folly, 183 

Chew House, Germantown, . . . . 187 

"Solitude" — House of John Penn, . . 191 

" Stenton " — Residence of James Logan, . 195 

" Keramics " at Stenton, 197 

Before the Fire — Stenton 199 



ILL USTRA TlOJfS. x v 

PAGE 
COURT-HoUSE, 201 

AT.LEGORICAL Group— New Post-Office, . 306 
The Old Bradford House, . . . .209 
The Merchants' Exchange, .... 213 

The New Post-Office, 217 

Letter Collecting, 219 

The Letter Rake— Sorting, .... 221 
At the Railroad Elevator, .... 223 

A Moment of Leisure, 224 

Preparing for Delivery, and Canceling 

Stamps, 225 

Off for the Depot, 227 

Washington at the Head of His Army, . 235 
Center Square Water Works, . . . 239 
Philadelphia Boys' Central High School, . 241 
Site of Masonic Temple, . . . - 243 

Penn Square in 1871, 245 

Old Horse Market Inn, 248 

Old Cab Stand, . . . . . . .250 

Old Freight Station, 251 

Grand Depot in 1876, 252 

Grand Depot in 1880, . . . . .254 
Lunch Hour at the Boys' High School, . . 259 
The Girls' Normal School, .... 263 
Drawing at the Normal School, . . . 265 
University of Pennsylvania, . . . • 267 
Fireplace in the Museum— Old Germantown 

Academy, 269 

Union School at Kingsessing, .... 273 
Protestant Episcopal Academy, . . . 275 
Five Minutes Late, ..•.-• 279 
A Sunny Corner in the Schoolyard, . . 283 

Friends' Meeting-House, 287 

Old German School, 291 

A Primary Scholar, 294 



XTi 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Benjamin Franklin (Bas-Relief ), . 

Franklin's Printing Press — London, 1725, 

Franklin's Electrical Machine, . 

Franklin's Court Sword, 

Mementoes from France, 

Franklin's Music Stand, 

Clock in the Library, 

Franklin's Grave, . 

W. H. Furness, D. D. (Portrait), 

Isaac T. Hopper, 

Lewis Tappan, 

LUCRETIA Mott, 

J. Miller M'Kim, 
Mary Grew, 
Grace Anna Lewis, 



Medical Hall, University of Pennsylvania, 369 

University Hospital, 375 

Hahnemann College, 381 

Clinic Hall, Woman's College, . . . 389 
Within the Gate, Pennsylvania Hospital, 399 
The Old Friends' Almshouse, . . . 405 

Home for Incurables, 411 

The "U. B." Stove, 417 

Christ Church Hospital, .... 419 

In the Slums, 423 

Picturesque Paupers, 427 

The Blockley Almshouse, .... 433 
(The Right to Bear Arms). 
Arms of the Sims Family, 438 ; Lloyd-Stanley, 439 ; 
Graeme, 440 ; Assheton, 441 ; Dickinson, 442 ; Bush- 
rod Washin2:ton, 443 ; Penn, 444 ; Logan, 445 ; Bar- 
tram, 446; Shippen, 447; Pemberton, 447; Janney, 
448 ; Chew, 448 ; Lardner, 449 ; Willing, 449 ; Mor- 
ris, 449; Hollinsfsworth, 450 ; Rawle,451; Williams, 
451; Norris, 451; Tilghman, 451; Powel, 453; 



PAGE 

297 
303 
po7 

311 
315 
319 
325 
329 
335 
341 
345 
351 
355 
359 
363 



ILLUSTRATIONS, 



xvii 



PAGE 

McCall, 453 ; Gilpin, 454 ; Lenox, 455 ; Allison, 456 ; 
Seals of the Five Early Governors (Gordon, Hamil- 
t'-'n, Morris, Denny, John Penn), 457 ; Biddle, 459 ; 
"Watmough,460; Boudinot, 460 ; The Smyth Hatch- 
ment at Christ Church, 461 ; Cadwalader, 463 ; Aber- 
crombie, 463 ; Vault Coverings at Christ Church 
Burial Ground, 465 ; The Peters Arms, Belmont Man- 
sion, 466 ; Franklin, 467 ; Penington, 468 ; Hopkinson, 
469 ; The Wallace Vault at St. Peter's, 470. 
Brass Knocker, Girard Mansion, . . . 472 
Statue of Stephen Girard, College Door- 
way, 473 

A Corner of Girard College, . . . 477 

On the Stairv7AY, 479 

In the Library, 481 

Girard's Birth Certificate, .... 483 

Secretary and Musical Clock, . . . 485 
Stephen Girard — His Gig. . . . . . 487 

''The Table WAS set WITH Much Silver," . 489 
Infinite Riches in a Little Room, . . 493 
Chairs, Tables and Bric-a-brac Memorials, 497 
Model of the Montesquieu, .... 501 

Pierre Girard's Cross of St. Louis, . . 503 




A QUAKER SOLDIER. 



"Dec. 29, 1667— Lord's Day.— At night comes Mrs. 
Turner to see us and there among other talk, she tells me 
that Mr. William Pen who is lately come over from Ireland, 
is a Quaker again or some very melancholy thing ; that he 
cares for no company nor comes into any, which is a plea- 
sant thing after his being abroad so long, and his father 
such a hypocritical rogue and at this time an atheist." 

A LITTLE complicated in statement, but on the whole 
a fair representation of the state of mind, not only of the 
good Mr. Samuel Pepys, but of the entire class repre- 
sented by him, toward a man more perversely and con- 
tinuously misunderstood and misrepresented than any 
other figure in that time of sharply-defined and always- 
encroaching individualities. And from that day to this 
the popular impression has been as thoroughly in the 
wrong as popular impressions are likely to be, one side 
of the shield receiving the strongest possible light, the 
other left always in shadow. 

Every child recalls the tall figure standing, parchment 
in hand, under the " treaty tree," surrounded by Indians 
in various appreciative attitudes, and every child is sure 
that this same tall figure in straight-skirted coat and 
small-clothes, with broad - brimmed hat, from whose 
shadow he looked out benevolently, is the true and only 



10 A SYLVAIi CITY. 

"William Penn. Till Macaulay, this picture was the 
possession of all, starting always into life as the name 
was heard — the one peaceful and sunny point to which 
the eye turned in a story made up too often of deeper 
shadows than one cares to consider. 

Then came the ingeniously-put charges in the volumes 
of the brilliant historian, who opened with a paragraph 
which seemed to sum up all the rare goodness and power 
with which each reader had instinctively endowed 
" Penn, the Apostle. " " Rival nations and hostile sects 
have agreed in canonizing him — England is proud of his 
name. A great commonwealth beyond the Atlantic 
regards him with a reverence similar to that which the 
Athenians felt for Theseus and the Romans for Quirinus. 
The respectable society of which he was a member hon- 
ors him as an apostle. By pious men of other persua- 
sions he is generally regarded as a bright pattern of 
Christian virtue. Meanwhile, admirers of a very differ- 
ent sort have sounded his praises. The French philoso- 
phers of the eighteenth century pardoned what they 
regarded as his superstitious fancies, in consideration 
of his contempt for priests and of his cosmopolitan be- 
nevolence, impartially extended to all races and all 
creeds. His name has thus become, throughout all civ- 
ilized countries, a synonym for probity and philan- 
thropy. Yet" — 

Here, with the charge that he is far more a mythical 
than an historical personage, begins a series of innuen- 
does rather than direct accusations, continuing through 



A QUAKER SOLDIER. 13 

the four volumes with a steadily-increasing animus, and 
leaving one in tlie unhappy state to which much of the 
modern historical research reduces one — entirely uncer- 
tain as to what is and what is not true, and disposed to 
consider everything a myth to which faith has hitherto 
been pinned. 

A sketch holds no room for refutation, but a recent 
dispassionate reviewer of Macaulay's estimates of other 
historical personages sums up in the keenest words the 
actual fact as to the soundness of his judgment : 

"This faculty of conveying the greatest amount of 
false effect with the smallest amount of definite misstate- 
ment appears to be an unconscious felicity in the reviewer, 
more like genius than any other faculty he possessed, and 
akin to that subtle power of self-deception which makes 
the heart of man deceitful above all things and despe- 
rately wicked." 

That the critic of the seventeenth century should fail 
to comprehend the motives and purposes of a man two 
hundred years in advance of his time is not surprising, 
but the nineteenth still waits for a biography which shall 
give neither Penn the Quaker nor Penn the politician, 
but Penn the man, Avith a clear summary of such forces 
as worked to make him precisely what he was. Hardly 
a figure of that curious transition time is better worth 
study, but so long as he is persistently considered only 
as Quaker, and every toucl of natural life suppressed, 
uncertainty and misgiving are likely to wait upon all 
judgment. 

While the son is more or less hid in mist, the father, 



14 A SYLVAN CITY. 

Sir William Penn, owns well nigh as suppressed an ex- 
istence as that of the Iron Mask. In the story of the 
great sea-captains of the time, he stood in England 
second to no one save Blake ; and in profound nautical 
science, dashing and unflinching bravery, and a power 
of resource that never failed, he was the worthy rival 
of Van Tromp and De Kuyter, Even Cromwell, who, 
like most Roundheads, had no love for a navy which 
remained persistently loyal, admits this. Of a family 
called old in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and 
trained under a father who was for most of his working 
life the captain of a merchantman, he knew every grade 
of work and learned how to obey before he dreamed of 
commanding. He was a captain before twenty, and 
even then a courtly and polished man, with bold and 
noble face, a strongly-built figure and a marked taste 
for good living. He had married in Rotterdam, just 
after receiving his promotion, Margaret Jasper, the 
daughter of a Dutch merchant, and Pepys has a line 
which, remembering his prejudices, is high praise : 
"Hath been heretofore pretty handsome and is now 
very discreet." 

Never was a time when discretion was more needed, 
and the child born to the young couple October 14, 1644, 
required precisely the inheritance he received — the ar- 
dent, unflinching temperament of the sailor father ; the 
more quiet but intense and faithful nature of a mother 
whose love, both as wife and mother, was a life-long 
passion. Over the cradle where the baby lay, its large 



A QUAKER SOLDIER. 



15 



and singularly luminous blue eyes watching the glitter 
of the sailor's uniform, the father prophesied the career 
that should build up the waning fortunes of the family, 
and make this son not only name, but wealth, friends 
and place. No words ever seemed to hold more truth. 
At twenty-three, a rear-admiral ; at twenty -five, vice- 




INTERIOR OF CHIGWELL GRAMMAR SCHOOL. 



admiral in the Irish sea ; at twenty-nine, vice-admiral 
of the Straits — what honor might not be expected before 
even middle life had been reached ? 

In the meantime the baby had grown into a beauti- 
ful and promising boy at Wanstead, in Essex, where, 



16 A SYLVAIf CITY. 

at the Chigwell Grammar School, then just founded by 
the Archbishop of York, and still standing, ivy growr 
and venerable, he began his march through the Latin 
grammar, then, as now, the first essential in a polite 
English education. His progress was wonderfully rapid, 
but even then influences of which he had no conscious- 
ness were shaping the future. The young Admiral, 
still under thirty, seems to have lacked utterly the sense 
of personal loyalty to any cause, and, while nominally 
faithful to the Protectorate, was, in fact, watchful over 
no interests but his own. A keen observer, it was easy 
for him to see that, even with Cromwell's power at its 
height, the majority of the nation were either secretly 
or openly royalist, and that at his death the Common- 
wealth must give place to a monarchy. A secret corre- 
spondence began with Charles Stuart, then in exile, 
which resulted in an offer from the Admiral to place the 
entire fleet at his disposal. The offer came to naught, 
for Charles had no ports and no money to pay sailors, 
and as the fleet had already been ordered on the fatal 
West Indian expedition, Cromwell, who knew every de- 
tail of the treachery, preserved his usual inscrutable 
silence. 

The attack on St. Domingo failed disastrously and 
through no fault of the Admiral's, who, to atone for 
the unexpected reverse, attacked the beautiful island of 
Jamaica, and with very small expenditure of force or 
life added it to the English possessions. Enchanted 
with the climate and natural features of the island, he 



A QUAKER SOLDIER. IS 

talked of it constantly on his return home, and the son 
listened and questioned with an equal enthusiasm, 
dreaming of the wonderful Western world by day and 
by night. There was short time, however, for the home 
life. Cromwell, for reasons quite inexplicable then, 
though now perfectly plain, chose to consider Penn as 
guilty as Venables, through whose weakness the as- 
sault on Hispaniola had failed, and they were ordered 
to separate dungeons in the Tower. The eldest son, 
little over ten years old and passionately attached to his 
father, was thrown into a state of the deepest melan- 
choly, brooding constantly over the misfortune, until 
one day, when alone and sad, a deep and sudden sense 
of happiness came to his soul, and the room seemed 
filled with a soft and heavenly light. 

There is no record of the immediate effect of this 
upon the child, but matters very shortly mended. The 
Admiral, who pined in his close dungeon, made full 
confession of his faults in a petition sent in to the 
Council, and Cromwell, who admired his genius, even 
when convinced of his want of loyalty, set him free at 
once. But his own calling being, of course, not open 
to him, he fell back upon intrigue as a permanent one, 
and, pretending that he had no further interest in poli- 
tics, retired to the estates in Ireland which had been 
the reward of his services to the CommouAvealth. A 
private tutor from England went with him, who had 
charge not only of Penn's education, but of that of the 
brother Richard, who, with a sister Margaret formed 



20 A SYLVAN CITY. 

the family. At fifteen, William Penn was fully pre- 
pared to enter Oxford ; a tall, slender lad, with a pas- 
sionate delight in every form of field sport, and an es- 
pecial fondness for boating. 

The death of Cromwell delayed all action for a time. 
The crafty and self-seeking Admiral realized that the 
army was still in the ascendant, and for more than a 
year they lingered in Ireland, until the deposition of 
Richard Cromwell made decisive action possible. At 
once he declared for Charles and hurried to the Low 
Countries to pay his court, where the king was so 
heartily glad to see him that he knighted him on the 
spot and employed him on some special service. His 
influence was at once brought to bear upon the navy, 
and with a power that, at a critical moment, brought 
Admiral Lawson and his ships up to the Tower, where 
they called for a free parliament. 

The result of this was finally the recall of the Stuarts, 
and Charles, who forgot obligations with an ease born 
of long practice as well as constitutional tendenc}', 
never forgot this. The way to royal favor and prefer- 
ment lay open, and Sir William Penn, whose ambition 
was even more for his son than for himself, looked for- 
ward to an even better fortune than he had dreamed. 
Young William was sent at once to Oxford and matricu- 
lated as a gentleman commoner within a short period. 
But it was long enough for the formation of friendships 
that lasted all his life. Poyal patronage assured him a 
brilliant position, but this he must have held in any 



A QUAKER SOLDIER. 21 

case. His superiors took pride in him as one of the 
hardest workers among students, and his equals in his 
slvill and daring in all manly sports. He gained what 
was for that time a profound knowledge of history and 
theology, and a very thorough one, not only of Latin 
and Greek, but of French, German, Italian and Dutch. 
He studied deeply the doctrinal discussions, the fruit of 
Cromwell's time, and, like many of the young men then 
at Oxford, was in principle far more Puritan than Roy- 
alist. The conflict, known to all noble and generous 
spirits who find convictions and existing forces in oppo- 
sition, became his then and for many following years, 
and he dreamed then the dream of many, who, seeing 
only "a reign of darkness and debauchery," looked to 
the New World as the scene of an empire, where neither 
bigotry nor formalism should rule, and no obstacles bar 
the way to the highest and holiest living. 

Disquieted and full of revolt, he was attracted by the 
preaching of Thomas Loe, an obscure layman, who had 
taken up the doctrines taught by George Fox. Penn 
had protested with others against the introduction of 
the Popish ritual at Oxford, and now went again and 
again, being absent so constantly from their own ser- 
vices that the superiors, with that wisdom and perspi- 
cacity which have distinguished superiors since the 
world began, immediately arrested and fined them for 
irregularit3^ Open rebellion was naturally the imme- 
diate consequence, and as the result of some reasonable 
but quite as many unreasonable and hot-headed assaults 



22 A SYLVAN CITY. 

on established custom, Penn, after many remonstrances, 
was expelled from the University. 

Probably no father ever experienced a keener sense of 
outrage than that felt by Sir William Penn. His son 
might have committed any form of seventeenth-century 
iniquity and been certain of pardon. Gambling, duel- 
ing, drunkenness were all hardly offenses ; were, on the 
whole, the effervescence of youthful spirits, as well as 
the chosen pursuits of the time. But non-conformity 
was a base and low-born tendency, and added to this 
was a sense of some deeper evil to come. The jovial 
Admiral went with clouded brow, and when the news 
of the expulsion came the disgrace hurt him to the core. 
Pepys records the misery into which the family were 
plunged and the consternation among the family friends. 

It was impossible to keep up the quarrel with this fa- 
vorite son, who seemed "in a low and sad state of 
mind," utterly unnatural at eighteen, and, after long 
deliberation, he took what bade fair to be the wise and 
effectual course. A party of college friends were about 
to begin the grand tour. The Admiral proposed that 
his son should join them, and Penn accepted with de- 
light. The reaction had come, and once presented at 
the brilliant court of Louis Quatorze, Penn forgot his 
scruples, and, while never going to the lengths common 
at the time, still lived a gay and joyful life, the life not 
of Quaker but of Cavalier. The Admiral rubbed his 
hands over the success of the experiment, determining 
that his son's education should be tinished in France, 



' if', :=^ 







A QUAKEB SOLDIER. 25 

and that lie should then enter the army. Penn went to 
Saumur prepared in his own mind for this change, 
placed himself under Moses Arayrault, and with this 
famous scholar not only read the principal fathers but 
studied thoroughlj^ the language and literature of the 
country. At the close of this course of study he began 
to travel, having again joined Lord Robert Spencer, 
with whom he had become intimate while living in Paris, 
at which time also he had met Lady Dorothy Sidney, 
sister of Algernon Sidney. With the brother a friend- 
ship now began which lasted uninterruptedly through 
all variations of opinion. Two years of intercourse 
with the best that France and Italy could afford had 
passed when Penn was suddenly summoned home, partly 
to attend to family affairs and partly to secure his own 
safety, as there were rumors of possible war. He had 
left London a moody and silent boy. He returned to it 
so fine a gentleman that the world first wondered, then 
opened its arms, and Mr. Pepys wrote : 

"Aug. 30, 1664. — Comes Mr. Pen to visit me. I perceive 
something of learning he hath got ; but a great deal if 
not too much of the vanity of the French garb and af- 
fected manner of speech and gait." 

The Admiral, who saw in this brilliant and fascina- 
ting son the realization of every dream, wisely spoke no 
word of the past, and to insure his forgetfulness of 
old companions and tendencies, kept him steadily em- 
ployed. He entered as a student at Lincoln's Inn, and 
gained a knowledge of law that served him in good 



26 A SYLVAN CITY. 

stead in many after emergencies, and apart from this^ 
he was constantly emploj^ed on the King's or his 
father's business. Then came the crisis in the Dutch 
war, when Penn was for some time on his father's 
staff and saw a gooddeal of sharp service at sea. With 
June came a final, decisive battle, bringing to the Ad- 
miral the greatest rewards that his King could heap 
upon him. He was informed that he would be raised 
to the peerage with the title of Lord Weymouth, 
in addition to the Irish grant of land and the com- 
mand of Kinsale. But in the meantime the plague 
had broken out, and the Admiral, who had left his 
son in London for a time, returned, to find to his 
despair that the dark mood had reappeared. Penh left 
off French, neglected the court and all visits, and spent 
his time with men of serious and devout lives. Absence 
had cured in the first case, and the experiment might 
succeed again. The court of Charles, dissolute and 
reckless, naturally repelled men who cared for better 
things, but a minor court, that of the Duke of Ormonde, 
who was practically vice-king of Ireland, had all the 
brilliancy and charm, with none of the disgusting fea- 
tures of the English one. The Ormondes were a family 
of soldiers, and Lord Arran, the second son, had already 
met William Penn and urged his coming over. The 
change was accomplished ; favorable word was sensat 
to the effect of the new surroundings, and once more 
the. Admiral breathed freely. 
Nevertheless, the turning-point had come, and his 



A QUAKER SOLDIER. 27 

own action shut the door on any chance of the future 
he had labored to make secure. An insurrection arose 
among the soldiers at one of the stations. Penn volun- 
teered under his friend Lord Arran, and having won 
general applause for his bravery and coolness, became 
eager to make arms his profession, and urged his father 
to accept the proposal made him by the Duke. The 
Admiral refused. This son must not be sacrificed in 
any chance skirmish, but must reserve himself for po- 
litical life and the founding of a family. Penn protested 
in vain, and at last resigned himself unwillingly to a 
decision he could not alter, and again the Admiral 
chuckled at carrying his point, with small thought that 
he had really checkmated himself once for all. 

As a remembrance of a dream never quite forgotten, 
Penn was painted at this time in full military dress — 
the only genuine portrait in existence, and the typical 
Quaker, the great apostle of peace, looks out upon us 
to-day armed and accoutred as a soldier ! It is a most 
noble and beautiful face, with a union of sweetness and 
resoluteness that made the key-note of his life — a face in 
which is evident " the delicacy of the scholar, hovering 
as a finer presence above the forceful audacity of the 
man of the world— at once bookman, penman, swords- 
man, diplomat, sailor, courtier, orator." 

To the day of his death these traits remained. The 
actual life of the soldier had been denied, but warfare 
was his portion, and he fought dauntlessly against prin- 
cipalities and powers through all the years that followed. 



28 A SYLVAN CITY. 

In the meantime another Irish land grant had been 
made to the Admiral, and Penn had full occupation in> 
hearing and adjusting the intricate cases resulting from 
over twenty jears of grants, confiscations and restora- 
tions. The Admiral confided fully at last in his son's 
business capacity and left the matter entirely in his 
hands, and a year passed in which only one trip to 
London was made. A sudden call took Penn to Cork, 
and there he heard that his old Oxford friend, Thomas 
Loe, would preach. He remembered his boyish enthu- 
siasm, and, led by curiosity, went to discover how the 
same thing would strike his maturer mind. The final 
crisis had come, and as he listened he knew that, vacil- 
late as he hereafter might between filial duty and duty 
to God, he was in his soul from that night a Quaker. 

It is hard in these days of tolerance and indifferentism 
to even imagine the conflict, inward and outward, that 
followed. Attending meetings, he was almost imme- 
diately arrested, refused the offered parole, and would 
have taken - trial with the rest had not an order come 
for his discharge. The thunderstruck Admiral ordered 
him back to London, and for a few days, as no change 
was perceptible in dress and speech, persuaded himself 
he had been mistaken. But the issue came ; Penn, after 
solemn consideration, refused to uncover before father or 
king, and the furious Admiral turned him out of doors. 

Scoff" as one may at outward peculiarities and puerili- 
ties, into this time of anarchy and revolution had come, 
in Quakerism, the first intellectual basis of true demo* 



A QUAKER SOLDIER. 



29 



cracy. To the founder of this system, "philosophies, 
arts, religions, legislations, were as nothing." Every 
man was complete in himself ; each human being, man 




SWARTHMOOR HALL. 



or woman, by virtue of the inner light, was supreme. 
Cromwell had said in the beginning, "Now I see there 
is a people risen that I cannot win, either with gifts, 
honors, offices or place, but all other sects and people 
I can." 



30 A STLVAW CITY. 

To Penn the dream of his youth seemed fulfilled. The 
politics of Quakerism were identical in spirit with the 
visions of Algernon Sidney, though in his democracy 
only pride of soul and heroic virtue ruled. The Com- 
monwealth had failed from inherent defects, but another 
might he founded in which the religious idea should 
prove the missing link, the point of union between here- 
tofore opposing systems. 

There were months in which the thought grew and 
matured. His recall home proved to the bewildered 
and unhappy Admiral that banishment had been useless. 
Penn wrote and spoke with a daring which seemed the 
wildest recklessness, and soon, in spite of friends at 
court, found himself in the Tower. For eight months 
and sixteen days he submitted to a solitary dungeon, 
and during that time in "I*»[o Cross, no Crown," added 
another notable book to the noble literature of the 
Tower. Vigorous pamphlets followed, and their effect 
was so strong that, though by this time the whole Penn 
family were in extraordinary trouble, an order for his 
release was sent. 

The story of the years that followed is one of perpet- 
ual conflict. His brave bearing in prison had gained 
over his father, who hoped nearly to the end that his 
views would moderate sufficiently to allow the accept- 
ance of the peerage. There had been continuous trials,* 
public discussions, short imprisonments and a general 
commotion, on which Charles looked with the smiling 
cynicism he had toward all convictions ; but through i/ 



A QUAKER SOLDIER. 31 

all, both he and his brother retained affection for the 
elder and genuine regard for the younger Penn, and ac- 
cepted the guardianship entrusted to them by the dying 
Admiral, who, in the final days of life, turned with a 
clinging affection to this contumacious and disappoint- 
ing Quaker son, in whose honesty and clear-sightedness 
he had such trust, that all his considerable property, 
saving a life-interest in the estate for his widow, was 
left to him. From his death-bed the Admiral sent to 
both the King and the Duke of York, asking for the son 
a continuance of the friendship shown the father, and 
James became guardian and protector, a relation which 
caused much scandal — Quaker subject and Catholic 
prince meeting together on terms that were incompre- 
hensible to the more violent members of the sect. But 
the relation affected property and not religion, and this 
fact was urged years afterward by Penn to the commit- 
tee of inquiry from Magdalen College. 

And now another master, before whom the hat was 
willingly doffed, claimed a service from which Penn 
had hitherto been exempt. At Chalfont, in Buckingham- 
shire, dwelt, during the first years of the civil war, cer- 
tain quiet friends whose names still carry a meaning 
deeper than any known to that troubled time. Side by 
side were John Milton, who had left his London house 
when the plague began and came to the friends who shared 
his convictions and delighted in his genius — Thomas 
Ellwood, the famous Isaac Pennington, and Gulielma 
Maria Springett, daughter of Sir William Springett, 



32 A SYLVAN CITY. 

who died at the siege of Arundel Castle. A true soldier, 
of noble presence and a character at once strong and 
sweet, he had married a woman of equal spirit and 
beauty, passionately devoted to him. There is no more 
pathetic story in the annals of the civil war than their 
short love life and tragic parting, only a few weeks be- 
fore the birth of this daughter, who grew into a lovely and 
dainty girlhood, sought by many gallants, but protected 
always by the mild and gracious shield of her Quaker 
faith and breeding. Like Penn, however, Lady Sprin- 
gett had known every fascination of court life, and 
Quakerism, in both their cases, meant inward rather 
than outward asceticism. 

Thomas Ellwood's memoirs give not only the story of 
his own unsuccessful love, but many details of the life 
at Chalfont. Guli loved music, and music was Milton's 
passion, second only in his mind to poesy. It was to 
these friends that he first told the secret of his comple- 
tion of "Paradise Lost," and it was Ellwood who sug- 
gested to him the theme of "Paradise Regained." 
Pennington had become the second husband of Lady 
Springett, and Penn on his first visit to this friend met 
Guli and found his fate. They were soon affianced, but 
her stepfather was then in jail for opinion's sake, much 
of his time being passed in prison, and the whole period 
of courtship was a perturbed and stormy one. Penn 
was tried and imprisoned for some months, wrote vari- 
ous pamphlets and treatises, and on his release went at 
once to Holland, where he had been urged to go in de- 




XEWGATli PKISON. 



A QUAKER SOLDIER. 35 

fense of the many then suffering persecution there. For 
them and for tlie many sections of the great Puritan 
party in England, who had fled to Holland at the re- 
turn of the Stuarts, America was the daily talk and the 
nightly dream, and Penn, as he journeyed from city to 
city, seeing always the best men of the age exiled and 
sad for conscience's sake, felt once more the longing 
that had come to him at Oxford, to found a free State, 
no matter if in the wilderness. 

Seven months after his liberation from Newgate he 
returned from Holland ; reported in London the results 
of his expedition, and then put aside every perplexity 
and posted down to Bucks. Here, while the house he 
had chosen, some six miles from Chalfont, was being 
made ready, he enjoyed the first quietness that had 
come to him for years, and in the early spring took his 
young bride home. 

Spring and summer passed, but the honeymoon gave 
no signs of ending. Neither friend nor foe could draw 
him from the seclusion he had chosen. He neither wrote 
nor traveled. The instinct of activity, always urging 
him on, seemed laid to rest, and many believed that he 
had subsided into the quiet country gentleman, content 
with a beautiful wife, a fine estate and the prospect of 
a family. Bat Guli herself had many of the same 
characteristics, and when the time was ripe and happy 
rest had done its needed work in healing and strength- 
ening, joined him in the work which, for three years, 
they pursued together. Miough the birth of the first son, 



36 A SYLVAN CITY. 

Springett, soon interfered with the wife's share in public 
work. 

The memoirs of Count de Grammont and the journal 
of George Fox give the two sides of this period, and for 
both toleration was unknown. William Penn stood al- 
most alone as a religious j^et tolerant man, but the 
Quaker soldier, while claiming that no civil magistrate 
should have power to inflict penalties for opinion's sake, 
used every weapon of controversy to stir up and wound 
the unbeliever. But though he had become the sword 
of the new sect, and a sword never sheathed, the in- 
fluence of his comprehensive and reasonable mind was 
felt on both sides. AVith the passing of the infamous 
Test act he once more, after five years' absence, re- 
newed intercourse with the court, and used every power 
of argument and persuasion to bring about a reconstruc- 
tion of methods, and James promised to add all his in- 
fluence with the King to this end. The province of New 
Netherlands, stretching from the Delaware to the Con- 
necticut, was then the property of the Duke of York, 
and as the only object of owners ^^^as to wring as much 
money as possible out of their estates, it became their 
interest to ofler concessions and inducements to emigra- 
tion. With fresh persecutions at home, the English 
Quakers turned toward this province, where many Puri- 
tans had already gone, and Fox and Fenwick began a 
negotiation for the purchase of a share from Berkely. 
A fierce dispute as to Fcnwick's rights began, which 
was finally referred to Penn, and soon the reconciled 




THE PENN COAT OF AKMS. 



A QUAKER SOLDIER. 39 

parties set sail for ^ew Jerse}^, leaving him in charge of 
their interests, other complications soon making him the 
responsible head 

Two years of intense activity followed. The New 
Jersey colony, for which he had made a constitution, 
prospered steadily, and he was the agent for all who 
desired to join them. He made a tour on the Conti- 
nent, preaching and writing, until, worn down with 
over-work, he fell into "a low and listless mood," and 
sufiered from intense depression which even Guli could 
hardly remove. It passed, with a short season of par- 
tial rest at home, and then even more engrossing inte- 
rests arose from 1678-80. In the centre of a brilliant 
court he stands out as one of the most extraordinary 
figures of the time. Absolutely neutral as to the great 
objects of party strife, and wanting no honors that 
court or king could offer, he was the intimate and 
trusted friend of Catholic and Protestant alike. The 
friendships of Penn are in themselves a story. Faith- 
ful, strong and tender, the man who felt them needed a 
catholic mind to comprehend and hold the varied na- 
tures that, having tested, never again swerved from 
their allegiance to him. John Locke, many years older, 
had discussed with him the constitution for North Caro- 
lina, its final failure being in those points where Penn's 
suggestions had been rejected. The Whig Lord Rus- 
sell, the Tory Lord Hyde, the Republican Algernon 
Sidney, all trusted and loved him, and, sought by rakes, 
courtiers, writers and members of Parliament alike, he 



40 A SYLVAJSr CITY. 

bent every power of his mind toward impressing upon 
them the necessity of toleration to opinion. Finally, 
after long and patient waiting, and the constant urging 
of his friends, the House of Commons consented to 
listen to the plea of Dissenters, and Penn made before 
a committee a speech such as had never been heard 
within the walls of Westminster Palace, a speech so 
convincing that the committee decided at once to 
insert in the bill then before Parliament a clause for 
relief. Had it passed, Penn would have remained in 
England, and Pennsylvania continued only a dream. 
The Titus Gates plot, apparently ruinous to every 
hope, proved, in the storm it aroused, a breeze to 
fill the sails of every westward-bound bark. Penn, 
who despaired of freedom at home, turned more 
eagerly to its possibility in the ^ew World, and after 
many expedients had been discussed with Sidney he 
settled upon a definite plan of action. 

Admiral Penn had left behind him claims on the 
government amounting to nearly fifteen thousand 
pounds, a sum equivalent to nearly four times that 
amount at present, and his son now sent in a petition 
that in lieu of any money settlement the King would * 
grant to him and his heirs forever a tract of unoccu- 
pied crown land in America. The location, described 
at length, included no less than forty-seven thousand 
square rniles of surface — a little less than the area of 
England, but Charles would not have hesitated a mo- 
ment had not the Privy Council vehemently opposed 



A QUAKER SOLDIER. 41 

the plan. With entire uncertainty as to the issue of 
the petition, Penn, with twenty-two others, purchased 
from Sir George Carteret a portion of East New Jer- 
sey, and was actively engaged in planning for new 
towns and the establishment of a liberal government 
when a charter was at last settled upon and sent in 
to the King, who at once set his signature to it, well 
pleased at canceling a heavy debt in such easy fashion. 

New Wales was the name fixed upon by Penn for 
the new province, partly from a remembrance of his 
Welsh ancestry and in part from its mountainous char- 
acter. A Welshman in the council objecting, Penn 
suggested Sylvania, on account of the magnificent for- 
ests, and the King at once prefixed Penn, in honor of 
the great Admiral. Penn objected, appealed, and at 
last offered twenty guineas to the Secretary to alter 
it, fearing that it would bring discredit upon him if he 
allowed the great province to bear his family name. 
Charles insisted, and the patent, drawn up in the usual 
form, is still in the office of the Secretary of State at 
Harrisburg. To Penn the reception of this charter 
was the crowning event of his life, and he wrote : 

*'God hath given it to me in the face of the world. . . 
He will bless and make it the seed of a nation." 

For months he labored with Sidney upon the Con- 
stitution. The rigid one drawn up by John Locke and 
Shaftsbury had failed, and Penn determined to simply 
make an essentially democratic basis for his form of 
government, and leave all "minor details to be filled in 



42 A SYLVAN CITY. 



as time, events and the public good demanded." The 
rough draft in form, Sidney and himself deUberated over 
every phase, the mutual labor being so intricate and 
continuous that the exact share of each will never be 
determined. Completed at last, the news quickly spread 
that the great religious democrat of the age had become 
sole owner of a mighty province, and from every great 
town in the three kingdoms, as well as from Holland, 
asrents were sent to confer as to terms of emigration and 
settlement. The Royal Society made him a member, in 
order to obtain the benefit of his scientific observations, 
and steady preparation for the voyage went on. The 
death of Lady Penn, always a fond and devoted mother, 
delayed everything for a time, and Penu's family affairs, 
which he arranged as if never to be among them again, 
were long in adjusting. He clung to wife and children 
with a longing tenderness, but Gull's courage was 
stronger even than his own. He doubted his return, 
but she never did, and, cheered by her faitli and carry- 
ing the good will of every earnest heart, the Quaker sol- 
dier went on board the Welcome at Deal, and on the first 
of September weighed anchor, and, pushing boldly out 
to sea, soon felt the winds that bore him toward the 
Sylvan City, still formless, save in its builder's mind. 



THE CITY OF A DREAM. 



There is a certainty in the mind of the average 
reader that as the Pilgrim Fathers landed on Plymouth 
Kock, so Penn landed at Philadelphia, the sense of 
vagueness encompassing most facts of early colonial life 
being even stronger here than in the case of some occur- 
rences actually less familiar. But the city in 1682 was 
still the city of a dream, a dream begun in youth and the 
brooding days at Oxford, and now transferred from mind 
to paper, the plan, drawn in part by Holme from Penn's 
instructions, being the latter's constant companion. 
Over the spot where to inward vision, streets, squares, 
houses and docks were plain, trees still waved and not 
a foundation stone had been laid. 

" According to its original design, Philadelphia was 
to have covered with its houses, squares and gardens 
about twelve square miles. Two noble streets — one of 
them facing an unrivaled row of red pines — were to front 
the rivers, a great public thoroughfare alone separating 
the houses from their banks. These streets were to be 
connected by the High Street, a magnificent avenue per- 
fectly straight and a hundred feet in width, to be 
adorned with lines of trees and gardens surrounding the 
dwelling houses. At a right angle with the High Street 

43 



44 A SYLVAN CITY. 

and of equal width, Broad Street was to cut the city in 
two from north to south. It was thus divided into four 
sections. In the exact centre a large public square of 
eight acres was set apart for the comfort and recreation 
of posterity. Eight streets fiftj^ feet wide were to be built 
parallel to Broad Street, and twenty of the same width 
parallel to the rivers. Penn encouraged the building of 
detached houses, with rustic porches and trailing plants 
about them, his desire being to see Philadelphia ' a 
greene country towne.' " 

With this vision always before him, the voj-age ended 
at last and the little company of faithful people, worn 
by nine weeks of battling, not only with wind and wave, 
but with the small-pox — which had broken out directly 
after starting, killed thirty and left many others weak, 
depressed and unfit for the labor awaiting them — sailed 
up the Delaware, and the Welcome dropped anchor at 
the little Swedish town of Upland, or Optland, then the 
chief town of the province. A single pine marked the 
spot at which Penn stepped on shore, and as he touched 
the new soil he turned to Pearson, who had been his com- 
panion and friend, and requested from him a name that 
should commemorate this first moment of possession. 
Too modest to give his own name, Pearson suggested, 
"Chester, in remembrance of the city whence I came," 
and Chester it remains to-day, a quaint and curi- 
ous town, which for some time hoped and expected to 
become the city Penn had planned. Here, in the 
Friends' Meeting House, a plain brick building opposite 



THE CITY OF A DREAM. 47 

the one where Penn remained as guest, a General As- 
sembly was called, and the Frame of Government and 
the Provisional Laws already published in England 
were discussed. Delaware sent her representatives ; 
the two provinces were declared united ; twenty-one 
new laws were added to the forty already formed, and 
at the end of a three days' session the colonists, having 
founded a state and secured for themselves and their 
posterity both civil and religious freedom, returned to 
their plows and the quiet round of every-day life. 

Penn's first step was to visit the various seats of gov- 
ernment in New York, the Jerseys and Maryland, and, 
at the last point. Lord Baltimore came out to meet him 
with a retinue of all the principal persons of the pro- 
vince. No amicable arrangement as to boundary seemed 
possible, and, giving up the hope of adjusting conflict- 
ing opinions, Penn first settled all questions as to the 
purchase and division of land and turned then to the 
plan for the new city. 

Holme, who had been for six months surveying the 
province, agreed that the best site was the narrow 
neck of land at the junction of the Delaware and 
Schuylkill. Clay, for brick-making, abounded on the 
spot, and immense stone quarries were but a few miles 
away. The entire land was owned by three Swedes, 
from whom the Governor bought it on their own terms, 
their settlement including only a few log huts and caves, 
with a little church where loop-holes served as window 
lights, or "for firearms in case of need," while all be- 



48 A SYLVAN CITY. 

yond was the unbroken forest of Wiccacoa. At Passa- 
jungh was the white-nut wood hut of Sven Schute, the 
Commander, and not far away a sturdy little fort of logs 
filled in with sand and stones bade defiance to all ene- 
mies, whether white or Indian. Tor ten years the 
Swedes within a radius of fifteen miles had gathered in 
the little block-house, listening to the Postilla read to 
them by the trembling voice of Anders Bengtssen, a 
weak old man, and at intervals they sent out appeals 
for some teacher who might for their souls' sake come 
to them in the wilderness. 

In 1697 the prayer was granted, and the three mis- 
sionaries sent by Charles XI arrived, and proceeded 
very shortly to build the little church, still standing at 
the corner of Christian and Swanson Streets. The great 
beechwood trees in which it was set have disappeared. 
The church, banked in with sunken grave-stones, is just 
above a busy wharf, and only the names of its founders re- 
main, some of them cut in the slate stones in the Mother 
country and sent over. Sven Schute, called by Queen 
Christina her "brave and fearless lieutenant," sleeps 
here, with many a forgotten Peterssen and Bengtssen, 
head-stones and graves alike lost to sight. To the little 
church, whose carvings and bell and communion service 
were all gifts of the King, Quakers, Swedes and Indians 
thronged, " marveling at the magnificent structure, " and 
for years after the founding of the actual city it was re- 
garded with pride. Wilson, the ornithologist, wor- 
shiped here, and lies now in the churchyard, where he 



THE CITY OF A DREAM. 



49 




begged to be buried, 



because it was "a 



silent, shady place, 
where the birds 
would be apt to 
come and sing over 
his grave." Kalm, 
the naturalist, sent 
out from the Uni- 
versity at Upsala 
to examine the flora of North America, had a 
place in the shadowy little pews, and his name 
remains to us in the laurel taken home by him with 
many another strange plant ; and named by Linnaeus, in 



WEATHER VANE FROM GRIST 
MILL IN DELAWARE COUNTY 
OWNED BY WILLIAM PENN, 
SAMUEL CARPENTER AND 
CALEB PUSEY. 



50 A SYLVAN CITY. 

his honor, Kalmia. And there also Ues a quiet woman, 
Hannah, wife of Nicholas Collin, the last of the 
Swedish missionaries, who, through all straits of pov- 
erty and disease, went her way till the strife ended 
and the undemonstrative and silent husband wrote over 
her : 

''In Memory of her piety, neatness and economy and of 
the gentleness of the Affection with which she sustained 
him through many trying Years ; and of his Grief for her, 
which shall not cease until he shall meet her in the land 
of the living." 

Before a house had been built, arrivals poured in. 
Twenty-three vessels followed Penn within six months, 
and the crowd of immigrants all wished to remain in 
the new city. Suflfering was inevitable, but the enthu- 
siasm of the new undertaking was upon every one. 
Many camped under the huge pines of the forest ; many 
more became cave-dwellers, though not a trace re- 
mains of this supremely uncomfortable life shared by 
rich and poor alike. The sod-houses of Nebraska 
and Kansas approach more nearly to the Philadelphia 
"caves" than any form of dwelling known at the 
present day to refugee or colonist. The caves were 
" formed by digging three or four feet into the ground, 
near the verge of the river-front bank, thus making 
half the chamber underground ; the remaining half 
above ground was formed of sods of earth, or earth 
and brush combined. The roofs were formed of layers 
of limbs or split pieces of trees, overlaid with sod or 
bark, river rushes, etc. The chimneys were of stones 







^^r 



GLOKIA DEI (old SWEDES') CHURCH. 



«r 



THE CITY OF A DREAM. 53 

and river pebbles mortared together with clay and 
grass or river reeds." 

Here, while the building went on, delicate women who 
had known only luxury in England worked with Saxon 
energy, helping fathers and husbands — bringing in 
water, cutting wood, tending pigs and sheep and poul- 
try, even carrying mortar, or helping saw a block of 
wood. Through all weariness and discouragement, the 
memory of " woful Europe" acted as a spur, and within 
a few months Penn was able to write to the Society of 
Traders that eighty houses and cottages were ready. 

The foundation of the Guest house had been laid be- 
fore Penn's arrival,, and as he stepped from the open 
boat in which he had come from Chester to the ''low 
and sandy beach" where Dock Creek emptied into the 
Delaware, the builders flocked to the shore. The point 
seemed in every way the best suited for tavern, ferry 
and general place of business, and Guest's house became 
from that date the Blue Anchor Inn, being then and for 
many years " beer-house, exchange, corn-market, post- 
ofiice and landing place." This first public building was 
formed of wooden rafters filled in with bricks brought 
from England, like houses still to be seen in Cheshire, of 
the Tudor and Stuart periods. It had a frontage of 
twelve feet on the river, and ran back twenty-two feet 
into what was afterwards called Dock Street. The ferry 
crossed Dock Creek to Society Hill, recorded as " having 
its summit on Pine Street and rising in graceful gran- 
deur from the precincts of Spruce Street," and a ferry 



54 A SYLVAIi CITY. 



also carried persons to Windmill Island, where grain 
was ground by a windmill, or to the Jersey shore. Ten 
other houses, known a3 Budd's Long Row, stretched 
northward, all built of wood in precisely the same man- 
ner, filled in with small bricks, the fittings and fur- 
nishings having been brought from England. 

Within a year of Penn's arrival a hundred houses, 
many of them of stone with pointed roofs, balconies and 
porches, had been built. Three hundred farms were 
settled and the first crops harvested, and sixty vessels 
had arrived in the Delaware. Before the second year 
ended six hundred houses stood complete, and the Gov- 
ernor wrote with honest and pardonable exultation 
to Lord Sunderland : ' ' With the help of God and such 
noble friends I will show a province in seven years equal 
to her neighbor's of forty years' planting." 

Massachusetts, founded by scholars, printed no book 
nor paper till eighteen years after her first settlement. 
In New York seventy-three years passed before a print- 
ing-press was deemed essential, while in Virginia and 
Mar3'land the mere mention of one was regarded b}' 
their governors as anarchy and treason. But a printer, 
William Bradford, of Leicester, went out with Penn in 
the Welcome^ and when the first stress of building was 
over, set up his press, printing an Almanac for 1687, 
which had of course been set up the preceding year. 
Schools had come first, Enoch Flower having built a 
rude hut of pine and cedar planks, divided in two parts 
by a wooden partition ; and here in December, 1683, the 




SEAL OF PENN'S COLONY. 



THE CITY OF A DREAM. 57 

children came together, and the minutes of the town 
council record both charges and curriculum : 

''To learn to read, four shillings a quarter; to write, 
six shillings ; boarding a scholar — to wit, diet, lodging, 
washing and schooling — ten pounds the whole year." 

Schools and press were the key-note of the new colony, 
and within six months from its landing one other unno- 
ticed event indexed its intellectual and moral status as 
nothing else could have done. The Swedes, who re- 
tained in full the superstitious terror of their northern 
solitudes, brought before the Council a miserable old 
woman accused as witch. Conviction would have been 
pardonable in a day when men like Richard Baxter and 
Cotton Mather recorded their faith in "a god, a devil 
and witchcraft," while even George Fox believed in 
witches and his own power to overcome them. The 
Governor listened quietly, no clue to his real thought 
on the benevolent face ; summed up to the jury, com- 
posed half of English, half of Swedes, in order to pre- 
vent dissatisfaction with the verdict, and waited for the 
result. Decision was speed}^ They found her guilty 
of having the reputation of witchcraft, but not guilty 
in manner or form as indicted. Her friends were merely 
required to give securities for her that she would keep 
the peace. A half smile was on the Governor's face as 
he left the court-room, and thus ended the first and last 
witch trial in the State of Pennsylvania. 

To-day, between Chestnut and Market, Second and 
Pront, the searcher for old landmarks will find the 



58 A SYLVAN CITY. 

house built and occupied by Penn during his first visit. 
Bricks, wooden carving and "servants to put them in 
place," came over together from England. 

"Pitch my house in the middle of the town, facing 
the harbor," he had written to his commissioners the 
year before, and this would seem to settle the still vexed 
question as to which house in Lctitia Court is to be con- 
sidered the original one, the one on the west side an- 
swering this description, and having been identified by 
a Robert Yenables, who knew it from a child, and who 
died in 1834 at the age of ninety-eight. " A great and 
stately pile " was built at Pennsbury, near Trenton, the 
forest land sweeping down to the Delaware, the deer 
ranging at will in this natural park ; but through his 
first visit the Governor preferred the little house with 
its nearness to all business interests. Later he moved 
to what is known as Slate-Roof House, at the southeast 
corner of Norris Alley and Second Street, and at his 
second visit, in 1700, transferred the little house to his 
daughter Letitia, for whom in time the court was named. 
Both houses have passed through various transitions, the 
larger one being after Penn's occupancy left in charge 
of James Logan, his secretary, and used as a govern- 
ment house. But before this, sorrow of every sort had 
come to the Governor. Political difficulties arising from 
TiOrd Baltimore's ambition and determined pushing of 
bis personal claims ; his wife dangerously ill ; his dearest 
friend, Algernon Sidney, a victim by the block, and 
Shaftesbury and Essex in prison ; persecutions raging 



THE CITY OF A DREAM. 



59 



against all non-conformers, and his own enemies at 
work. To return to England was absolutely necessary, 
but he went with a heavy heart, leaving behind a letter 
in which he apostrophises the city of his love : 




-^Sal J^^.^ ^ 



penn's house in letitia street. 



"And tliou, Philadelphia, the virgin settlement of this 
province, named before thou wast born, what love, what 
care, what service and what travail has there been to bring 
thee forth and preserve thee from such as would abuse and 
delile thee ! My soul jDrays to God for thee, that thou 
mayest stand in the day of trial, that thy children may be 
blessed of the Lord, and thy people saved by His power." 



60 A SYLVAN CITY. 

There was need of such prayer far beyond his own 
knowledge or worst apprehension, for, seek as he might, 
many years went by before he saw again the city whose 
foundations were in his very soul. They were hard 
years, and few lives hold record of deeper tragedy than 
filled every one. With the change of dynasty and its 
endless complications came a disaster which for a time 
threatened utter ruin. An order of the Council, which 
regarded him as the friend of the exiled King, deprived 
him of the government of his province and annexed it to 
New York, and the place of the wise and far-sighted 
Governor was given to a man, "a mere soldier, coarse, 
abrupt and unlettered," a stranger to the founder's ideas 
and intentions. That the charter was still valid and the 
whole action illegal could not hinder present harm, but 
more than a year passed before the course of affairs 
could be changed. Not until thirty months of constant 
labor and bitter anxiety were ended was the order re- 
voked, King William becoming convinced of his own 
mistake ; but the restoration came too late for the wife, 
who had sickened and pined through the sorrowful 
waiting, dying at last in Penn's arms. His oldest 
son, Springett, owning the sweetest and noblest traits 
of both father and mother, was in a decline. Le- 
titia and William were the onh' remaining children, 
the latter his heir, but totally unlike the elder 
brother, being a reproduction of all the worst as 
well as some of the best points of his grandfather, the 
Admiral. Yearn as Penn might for the quiet of Penn- 



THE CITY OF A DREAM. 61 

sylvania, it was impossible to leave this favorite son, 
and six years passed after the restoration of his rights be- 
fore he again set foot in his own province. The years 
without Guli had been full of anxious forebodings, for 
nothing in the son gave promise that the colony could 
prosper in his hands, and, helpless under many house- 
hold difficulties, a second marriage seemed the natural 
solution. Hannah Callowhill, long known and a valued 
friend, was his choice ; not only a notable housewife 
but a woman of extraordinary sense and spirit and 
equal executive ability, who in later years became the 
real ruler of the province, and whose name is perpetu- 
ated in one of the northern streets of the city. Of the 
six children of this marriage John Penn, known as 
"the American," was the only one born here, the 
event taking place in the " Slate-Roof House," just one 
month after their arrival. The fact seems not to have 
increased his love for America, every one of Penn's de- 
scendants manifesting as much eagerness to get away 
from the province as their progenitor had felt to reach it. 
Pirates and contraband traders swarmed in the rivers, 
and one of the Governor's first acts was to call the As- 
sembly together and urge an abandonment of the non- 
resistance policy. By early spring he had succeeded in 
this and various other measures for the good of the set- 
tlement, the chief of these being its formal incorpora- 
tion as a city, with charter. Mayor and other city offi- 
cers. Though founded in so short a time, the colony 
had increased till equal in number to those of more 



62 A SYLVAN CITY. 

than double its years, but the colonists unfortunately 
shared too little in the spirit of the founder, and "pas- 
sion and grasping restlessness" were both at work in 
discouraging fashion. 

His family had been settled at Pennsbury, which had 
been built and furnished in a style befitting the Gover- 
nor of a great province, and the freest hospitality was 
exercised. The peculiar costume of later Friends was 
unknown. Penn himself wore the full-bottomed wig of 
the period, and bought four in one year, while the dress 
of his wife and daughter was quite in harmony with 
such expenditure. The wealthier women at that time 
wore "white satin petticoats, worked in flowers, pearl 
satin gowns, or peach-colored satin cloaks ; their white 
necks were covered with delicate lawn, and they wore 
gold chains and seals, engraven with their arms." 

Penn's cellar was well stocked with fine wines, and he 
enjoyed good living, though always temperately. His 
passion for boating still remained, and wherever possi- 
ble he went from settlement to settlement in his yacht, 
and about the country on one of the fine horses brought 
from England. His charities were continuous, and some 
of the best pages in his history are the items of his private 
cash-book, while he bent every energy to alterations in 
the constitution and a better shaping of every law. Had 
his own provisions remained in force, and even "ten 
righteous men " been found filled with the same unsel- 
fish zeal, the city would have been even now far in ad- 
vance of any other assemblage of brick and mortar on 




"^r.-^ '#kix»L^i *^^' 



THE CITY OF A DREAM. 65 

the continent ; but month by month it fell below the 
founder's standard. At his second coming, and even as 
late as 1720, there were but four streets running parallel 
with the Delaware, while in 1776 "the town extended 
only from Christian to Callowhill Streets, north and 
south, and houses built as far west as Tenth Street 
might fairly be classed as countr}^ seats." 

The "great houses " described in a map of 1720, still 
to be seen in London, were really small, two-storied 
buildings, no larger than those now occupied by the 
average artisan, and back of all lay the still nearly un- 
broken forest, drained by muddy creeks which cut the 
city into several sections before emptying into the Dela- 
ware. Penn's enforced and sudden return to England 
allowed the beginning and growth of many abuses, 
against which he struggled with such energy as was 
possible, until his final sale of the province many years 
later. Market-houses filled up the centre of High Street, 
which he had intended should be free and unobstructed. 
The open stalls gradually lengthened out, not only here, 
but at many other points, the latest relic of these being 
the old market-house at the corner of Second and Pine 
Streets. Frankford, Roxborough, Germantown and 
many another hamlet grew up slowly orf the outskirts, to 
be eventually swallowed b}^ the growing city and form 
the bewildering and involved arrangement of streets 
here and there contradicting and disconcerting the right- 
angled regularity of the original plan. 

Time and business exigencies have claimed most of the 



66 A SYLVAN CITY. 

old sites, and few landmarks remain ; but, every now and 
then, may still be seen a house of the black and red 
English brick with the hipped-roof and picturesque out- 
line of an earlier day. Germantown has still several 
specimens unaltered, "except by the removal of the 
projecting stoop on the second story, built as a vantage 
ground in case of an expected attack from the Indians, 
who never came." 

Prosperity was the law of the city, and, with comfort 
and even luxury increasing year by year, the people set- 
tled into comparative indifference to anything beyond 
material progress. The Quaker poor had been provided 
for as early as 1712 by an almshouse on the south side 
of Walnut Street, above Third, a portion of the old 
building standing till the Centennial j^ear, when the 
space was filled with business houses. It was a collec- 
tion of small cottages, each with its occupant, set in the 
midst of a quaint old garden. The City Poorhouse was 
"on a green meadow,-' extending from Spruce to Pine 
Streets and from Third to Fourth, and, contrary to all 
accepted belief and statement, it was here, and not in 
the Quaker Almshouse, that Evangeline found Gabriel. 
The latter was simply an asylum for their own aged 
poor and never used as hospital, while contemporary 
records show that the former swarmed with fever and 
cholera patients, and that the Sisters of Charity acted 
as nurses through both epidemics. Custom is stronger 
than fact or reason, and pilgrims will still fall before the 
wrong shrine ; though, as both are covered by business 



V 

THE CITY OF A DREAM. 69 

houses, thrills of emotion may be experienced with equal 
facility at either point. 

The need for prisons made itself felt in 1682, when 
"the Council ordered that William Clayton, one of the 
Provisional Council, should build a cage against next 
Council day, of seven feet long by five feet broad." A 
private dwelling house was fitted up for the second, and 
a third and more substantial one was built in 1685, in 
the centre of High Street, and indicted as a common 
nuisance in 1702, Penn having protested against that 
and many other violations of the original plan. A much 
more elaborate stone building at the corner of Third 
and High, known till after the Revolution as "the old 
Stone Prison," was the seed of the present famous 
structures, and with self-government for the colony be- 
gan the reforms in prison discipline adopted in full 
years before other States considered the subject worthy 
of attention. 

The Quaker Pest-house disappeared long ago, to be 
replaced by the Pennsylvania Hospital, at Eighth and 
Pine streets, the original building still forming a small 
wing to the present one. 

On Chestnut street above Third stood the hall of the 
" Honorable Society of Carpenters," memorable always 
as the meeting place of the first Continental Congress, 
the State House, though finished, being then occupied 
by the Provincial Assembly. But these, though essen- 
tially a part of old Philadelphia, are of another era, and 
before their building had come a time when the mind of 



70 A SYLVAN CITY, 

the founder ceased to influence the city it had planned, 
and after long experience of neglect, dishonesty, in- 
gratitude and every wrong which seems to spring natu- 
rally from the possession of unearned and undeserved 
privileges, Penn transferred all right and title in the 
disappointing colony to the Crown, retaining only his 
Governorship. "The Holy Experiment" remained holy 
only to the originator, and so far as lay in their power 
the people of Philadelphia ignored his wishes, set aside 
many of his provisions in the Constitution, and in the 
midst of the crowding misfortunes into which, through 
the treachery of his steward, he was precipitated, sought 
only to wring from them the largest amount of conces- 
sion for themselves. The years that follow hold much 
the same record, and though Logan and a few devoted 
friends did their best to carry out his system and ideas, 
the city ceased to represent the mind of its founder. 

To one man alone the ideal had come, and it would 
seem that when failing powers and fortunes had done 
their worst, the great soul was allowed to transfer 
its ideals to a mind more practical, and thus in the end 
more successful. Philadelphia's story would have ended 
then and there, so far as anything but material progress 
and prosperity were concerned, but for the mind of Ben- 
jamin Franklin, who gave the first impetus toward in- 
tellectual life, and whose name might justly stand as 
the founder and originator of every means of genuine 
growth. 

"Schools, universities, free churches, pubh; Hbraries, 



THE CITY OF A DUE AM. 73 

drainage, fire and military companies, street lamps and 
street sweeping — every reform from the broad policy of 
the statesman to the smallest detail bears somewhere 
the bold scrawl, Franklin fecit.'' ^ 

What Penn had hoped for was to come from no son 
of his. William, his successor, died from his excesses ; 
John visited his province, but returned with speed to 
the stead3'-going English life he preferred, and the 
family and descendants of the great non-conformist then 
and after became sleek and reputable Church of England 
men ; some with scholarly tastes, but not one w^ith any 
marked portion of individuality, purpose or ability, 

Tlie Quaker element of the city, though dominant, 
had intermixed with it a large population who were not 
so certain that all necessary wisdom could be obtained 
by the facility of an inward flash. Something of the libe- 
ral tone of a metropolis had gained upon it, until "by 
the close of the colonial age Philadelphia had grown to 
be the centre of a literary activity more vital and ver- 
satile than was to be seen anywhere else upon the con- 
tinent, except at Boston. In the ancient library of 
Philadelphia there are four hundred and twenty-five 
original books and pamphlets that were jDrinted in that 
city before the Revolution," many of them being descrip- 
tions of the beauty and desirability of the province as a 
home. 

It was in 1712 that the first shock of paralysis fell 
upon Penn, who had borne then for ten years some of 
the heaviest burdens of his burdened life. There were 



74 A SYLVAN CITY. 

weeks of lethargy, and months in which business was 
kept from him, the first attempt to attend to it result- 
ing in another shock. Through it all, Hannah Penn 
managed the affairs of his government with an energy 
and wisdom almost equal to his own, James Logan, 
in Philadelphia, writing every detail to her and con- 
tinuing the loyal service which had for many years 
made Penn''s affairs stand far before his own. 

With a third and final shock all active mental life 
ended. There were five years in which he rested at 
E-uscombe, waiting for the end — years in which no trace 
of the Quaker soldier remained, save the gentle, serene 
temper that even in sharpest conflict had never failed 
those who loved him. A child again, he played with 
the abandoned children of his oldest son, wandering 
with them from room to room of the great house, and 
only troubled when he discovered his wife writing. 
Though memory had gone, some vague sense of grief 
and difficulty seemed to associate itself with this inces- 
sant correspondence, and at last it became necessary to 
carry it on secretly or at night. Friends watched him, 
and he clung to them though their names could not be 
recalled. At last in a summer morning, daybreak just 
visible in the sky, the end came. The City of a Dream 
had long since passed from his mind, and the dreamer 
awoke now in a better " city whose builder and maker 
is God." 



CASPIPINA:" 



THE STORY OF A MOTHER CHURCH, 




In the old days 
in Philadelphia, 
when Christ 
Church and St. Peter's 
— the " new church on 
the hill" — formed but 
one parish, they had a 
rector and two assist- 
ants who were born 
and bred Philadel- 
phians. The rector 
was the Rev. Jacob Duche, the assistants William White 
and Thomas Coombe. 

Mr. Duche had been educated in England, and was 

75 



— > rananm v>*^' Hm 




ST. Peter's gate. 



70 A SYLVAN' CITY. 

ordained by the Bishop of London upon the request of 
the vestry of Christ Church, of which his father was a 
member, for the express purpose of acting as assistant 
to Dr. Jenney, who was then the rector of the church. 
The young fellow was full of the spirit of his day, and, 
as "Junius," had S€t all England to public letter- 
writing, Mr. Duche had not been very long at home 
before he, too, printed his " Observations on a Variety 
of Subjects, Literary, Moral and Religious," describing 
himself as "a gentleman of foreign extraction," and 
signing himself "Caspipina," "an ingenious acrostic," 
which means " Christ and St. Peter's, in Philadelphia, 
in North America." The title is now over a hundred 
years old, but it covers the subject of this paper, and 
by its very quaintness suggests the spirit of the early 
colonial days, and carries us back to the fashions and 
life of the days when "Christ and St. Peter's" were 
growing into shape and influencing the history of the 
city and the church. 

When we think of life in early Philadelphia we recall 
William Penn and his group of Quaker friends, and the 
existence of a "Church party" seems of little import- 
ance. To Penn himself it was at first a matter of 
friendly indifference, but it soon began to show itself as 
an agitating force, bus}' and active, and in the history 
of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States 
Christ Church stands as a mother, sending her children 
everywhere through the country, cheering them when 
at work and calling them back to her for counsel. In 



*' CASPIPIWA.''' 79 



the history of the country she also has her place. Mr. 
Duche made the first prayer in Congress, Bishop White 
was the first chaplain, and Washington and many of his 
generals and statesmen worshipped within her walls. 
The day Independence was declared her bells were 
rung, the vestry struck out the name of the King from 
the liturgy and took his bust from the wall. Her rector, 
William White, was the first bishop of English conse- 
cration in the United States, and his first sermon in his 
new position was preached in St. Peter's Church. In 
Christ Church was held the first General Convention 
of the Church ; here our American prayer-book was 
adopted, and in the long years since 1694, when it was 
founded, what a hue of bishops, of priests, of deacons, 
of communicants, of old and young, clergy and laity, 
has gone from these old walls ! The bells have pealed 
for hundreds of weddings and tolled for as many fune- 
rals, and the babe who was baptized in its font has been 
carried back in old age and laid before its altar, and then 
taken away to rest in its churchyard. There are few 
old families in the city who have not some link with the 
history of " Caspipina," and how many churches and 
missions in the country have looked to them when help 
was needed. 

When William Penn, in 1682, came up the Delaware 
River he came with a well-settled plan. He had no 
vague ideas of flying somewhere in a new world for 
refuge and prosperity. Other men filled with as much 
energy and resolution had had less purpose, and had 



80 A SYLVAW CITY. 

< 

boldly pushed for foreign shores, making a home on the 
first spot to which Providence or chance led them, 
Penn looked much farther ahead, and had his plans 
made before he started. He had selected a fair and 
fertile country and had secured a grant of it from the 
king, and meant, being provident and peaceful, as well 
as energetic, to have his title ratitied by the original 
owners. He had decided upon the names of his x^ro- 
vince and its future city, and the plan of the latter, 
founded, it is said, on that of Babylon, lay clear and de- 
finite in his mind. Before his prophetic vision the forests 
disappeared, and a "green country town, always whole- 
some," embowered in gardens, peaceful and prosperous, 
" lay betwixt its rivers." He meant this city to be free 
to all good people, sober and of honest repute, but his 
first concern was, of course, for his own friends. It was 
to hold its gates open to all sects, but it was to be gov- 
erned by the Quakers, and all settlers were expected to 
agree with the spirit that should animate the laws and 
their working. The invitation Penn sent out was so 
broad and so enticing that he soon had a larger following 
than any other single leader into the New World, but 
he drew very few vagabonds and soldiers of fortune. It 
was a fair country he offered, but it was to be pervaded 
by law and order, and the conditions were not of advan- 
tage to the free-lances. But with the Friends from 
London, and York, and Cheshire, and all parts of Eng- 
land, came also their neighbors and relations who were 
still Churchmen. These were not fleeing from persecu- 



" caspipina:' 8t 

tion, but were energetic, educated younger sons, and 
men of the middle class, who determined to secure better 
fortunes than England gave them. They soon became 
a prosperous and influential element in the Pennsylva- 
nia colony, and, as was inevitable, became also a dis- 
turbing power. The Churchmen were law-abiding, but 
they were not Quakers, and they did not agree with 
many of the plans and usages of Penn's administration, 
and they were very open on the subject. For some 
years, however, all went quietly enough. The forest 
was to be cleared away, homes built, communication 
established, and there was as much unity as industry. 
The Swedes had their church and the Friends their 
meeting-house, and it is likely the Church people went 
to either one or the other. Their own Church was very 
scantily represented in the colonies, and along the 
twelve hundred miles of sea-coast, dotted here and there 
with English settlements, were few ministers and fewer 
churches. The chaplain at the fort in New York tra- 
veled about as he could, but in neither Pennsylvania, 
the Jerseys, New York or New England was there a 
resident clergyman. 

This condition of affairs was much talked about in 
certain circles, and in 1695 the Bishop of London sent 
the Rev. Mr. Clayton to Philadelphia, to do what was 
possible. When he came he did not find a large congre- 
gation, but he drew about fifty people together ; they 
held regular service, and at once began to build a little 
brick church on a lot of ground by a pond, where the 



83 A SYLYAlSf CITY. 

ducks swam and the boys waded. " Blind Alice, " an 
ancient colored woman, often quoted by the early histo- 
rians, said that she could touch the roof with her hand, 
but this is considered something of an exaggeration, un- 
less the good lady grew very much shorter as she grew 
older. But, no matter how low the building was, it 
was considered very handsome and very much of an 
enterprise ; and before Mr. Clayton died, two years 
after, his congregation had grown to seven hundred, 
and there are parishes to-day that cannot boast as 
much prosperity, and certainly not as quick growth ! 
Many of these new members were converts from 
Quakerism, and this did not please the Penn party, and 
when, in 1700, Dr. Evan Evans came to take Mr. Clay- 
ton's place, and entered upon his duties with keen- 
sighted and steady enthusiasm, the young Friends were 
forbidden to attend the services. They had flocked 
there full of curiosity, and the broad-brims had come 
off in church as they never did in meeting, i^ow when 
the edict went out that they should not enter the doors, 
they were not pleased. Amusements were not plenty 
in Philadelphia, and it was hard to be deprived of this 
serious, if vain form. So then, being used to obeying 
the letter of the law, if not the spirit, thej^ stood under 
the windows and listened, and by-and-by, conviction 
giving courage, how many must have entered the door 
and forever left the broad-brim hat behind ! The coun- 
try Friends coming in to the market had their own 
curiosity about this new vanity, and were moved to go 







i 



'' CASPIPINA:' 85 



and see what it was like, and, behold, it was nothing 
new ! What they heard was simply the old service 
familiar to so many of them, and they liked it. It 
brought back memories of their childhood, of England, 
and of the mothers who had died content in the old 
faith ; and, as they listened to the prayers and chants 
they knew so well, but in which they now dared not 
join, old affections fought with new doctrines, a^id many 
went home disturbed and discontented, to return again 
and again to the little brick church and at last to come 
for baptism. This went on until new members were 
numbered by the hundreds, and Dr. Evans' zeal grew 
stronger and stronger. He held service on Sunday and 
on holy days, on Wednesday and Friday, on market 
days, and at last, all through the week of Yearly Meet- 
ing when the Quakers from all around the country were 
in town. He wore a surplice, and William Penn wrote 
to James Logan that "Governor Gookin has presented 
Parson Evans with two gaudy prayer-books as any in 
the Queen's Chapel, and intends as fine a communion 
table also, both of which charms the Bishop of London 
as well as Parson Evans, whom I esteem." 

In the midst of all this there came a reinforcement to 
the Church. The venerable " Society for the Propaga- 
tion of the Gospel in Foreign Parts," just organized in 
London, sent George Keith over as a missionary, and in 
all the country around no man was better known, better 
hated, better liked than George Keith. He had been 
the first Master of the Friends' Public School in the 



86 A SYLVA]^ CITY. 

city and a zealous follower of George Fox. As a public 
Friend he had led many a meeting and written and 
spoken many an earnest word for his faith. After a 
time he began to have doubts, and to speak of them, 
and still having great influence, he led five hundred 
good Quakers out of meeting into a separate society 
which was called by its enemies " The Keithian." He 
was excommunicated and was spoken of as " an ill-con- 
ditioned, jDestilent fellow," who gave a great deal of 
trouble. On the other hand, to make matters even, the 
history of the Church speaks of him as an able and zeal- 
ous man, who gave great joy and satisfaction to the 
people by returning in the character of a minister of 
the Church of England. With him came the Rev. Mr. 
Talbot, who was afterward the rector of St. Mary's, 
Burlington, N. J. These two missionaries traveled 
around the country, and, in 1704, there were six churches 
in and near Philadelphia. 

By this time the little building used by the Christ 
Church people was too small and they ordered thirty- 
seven thousand bricks from England and began to build 
around the old church, which lay like a kernel in a nut 
while the new walls went ujj. They had now a com- 
munion service, presented by Queen Anne, which is still 
in use, and two bells, both of which were afterward 
sent to St. Peter's, but are now hung in Christ Church 
Hospital. AVhen the time came to tear down the old 
church the congregation went down to " Old Swedes' " 
and worshipped there with their Lutheran brethren. 



''CASPIPINAy 



87 



Penn was now in England, 
considering whether he should 
transfer his province to the 
Crown, and the Governor in 
his place being a Churchman, 
built a pew in Christ Church, 
and then charged himself an 
annual rent of five pounds a 
year for it. The graveyard, 
Fifth and Arch, where the 
vestryman, Benjamin Frank- 
lin, was afterward buried, was 
bought, a library founded, and 
there was no lack of interest 
or enterprise. 

In the meantime there had 
arisen some complications in 
civil affairs, and the town was 
divided into two parties, one 
the "Penn government," the 
other "• the Church faction," 
as the early historians are 
pleased to put it. The Quakers 

were loyal enough to England, but they ignored the 
King as far as they could. This was their own pro- 
vince, and, as long as they were peaceable and law- 
abiding, why should the powers at home bother them ^ 
The church people were restive under some of the 
Quaker rules, and longed for royal government, and 




ST. Peter's — the font. 



88 A SYLVAN CITY. 

more than once sent petitions for it to the King, and 
this Penn naturally enough resented. Then there 
arose the question of a militia force. There were 
threats of invasion from Indians, and dreadful rumors 
of pirates from the Barbados who were sworn to sail 
up Delaware Bay and sack Philadelphia. Some of the 
Quakers were in favor of a militia, and the Church 
party certainly was. The only question was, who 
should serve in it ? The whole body of Quakers an- 
swered at once to this — they could not ! An armed 
resistance was opposed to all their principles. "But 
some one must serve," replied the Church party. " Cer- 
tainly," said the Quakers, "and all of thee ought to do 
so, for it is not against thy religion." The Church people 
were not to be persuaded in this way. They were will- 
ing to drill and to fight, if there was need, but the other 
citizens must come also. They discussed this, and 
James Logan and other Friends wrote to England about 
it, yet neither Quaker nor Churchman would yield, but, 
as neither Indian nor pirate appeared, the only harm 
done was in the dissension among the citizens. 

In 1727 the congregation again found itself too large 
for its building, and, tearing out the western end, they 
began to build the present church. They looked for- 
ward to the future and resolved on final and ample ac- 
commodations, but, unhappily, to accomplish their ob- 
ject, they mortgaged their present and the coming days 
together. The congregation subscribed again and again ; 
help came from England, Ireland and the Barbados, 



'' CASPIPINA:' 89 



and in 1744, after many troubles with debts, the build- 
ing was finished. Then, in a few years, came the ques- 
tion of a steeple and chimes, and three hundred people 
at once subscribed to a fund for them. But it took a 
great deal more mone}'^ than this subscription amounted 
to, and the vestry met to consider what was best to be 
done. It was decided to hold a lottery, and thirteen 
honest men and true, among them Benjamin Franklin 
and Jacob Duche, " Caspipina's " father, were appointed 
trustees for the " Philadelphia Steeple Lottery." The 
scheme succeeded very well, but still there was not 
enough, and so a second one was ordered and the needed 
sum was at last completed, and, in 1754, the steeple, 
being all ready, the ship Myrtilla, Captain Budden, 
master, set sail from England, bringing a chime of eight 
bells, costing £560 7s. 8d. A workman came to hang 
them ; Captain Budden refused all paj^ment for bringing 
them, and the whole town became greatly excited over 
this addition to its "credit, beauty and prosperity." 
Every one wanted to hear the chimes, and it was or- 
dered they should be rung on market days, when the 
countrymen were in town. From Germantown and 
other villages the people would walk over the meadows 
and through the woods, until they were near enough to 
the city to hear the ringing and the chiming of the 
bells, and whenever the Myrtilla was sighted down the 
river the chimes welcomed and announced it. The first 
time they were tolled was for the wife of Governor An- 
thony Palmer, whose twenty-one children had all died 



90 A SYLVAI^ CITY. 

of consumption, and, while the tolling was going on, a 
careless bell-ringer was caught in the ropes and killed ; 
and so some of the old Philadelphians were not sure 
that chimes were to be commended. 

Years after all this, the tenor bell, which weighed 
eighteen hundred pounds, was cracked, and, the story 
goes, the vestry tried here and there to replace it, but 
no foundry would promise to make another with just 
the same tone and weight, and so the vestry were in de- 
spair, until it occurred to them that they had best see if 
the old English foundry, where the bells were made, was 
still in existence. Lester & Pack, the old partners, they 
found were dead long, long before, but the younger firm 
sent back word that the old bell should be sent to them 
with the treble one to harmonize upon. They recast it, 
and when it came back — but not in the Myrtilla — and 
was hung in its place, it rang out perfectly true and in 
concord with the other bells. 

By this time, 1758, Philadelphia was a fair and estab- 
lished city. The bluffs still bordered the Delaware River, 
and green woods and fields ran back to the fine houses built 
on the Schuylkill. There were bridges over the creeks, 
and down in the city some paved streets. The houses 
had balconies and porches over the doorway, and here 
in the cool of the evening the fathers sat and talked of 
the town news ; the mothers compared experiences and 
complained of the apprentices who lived in their houses. 
Under the shade of the buttonwood and willow trees 
the young gentlemen and officers, who called themselves 



CASPIPINA. 



91 




" Lunarians," strolled up and down with bright young 
Churchwomen and coquettisli Quaker girls. Before the 
constables went to bed they Avalked about to see if all 
was quiet, and here and there lanterns glimmed, light- 




»2 A SYLVAN CITY. 

ing some old citizen from his sober festivities. New 
York could be reached by John Butler's stage coaches 
in three days, and stage vessels and wagons started once 
a week for Baltimore. 

There were few politicians in the town, and no party 
lines drawn by politics. Opposite the State House, 
Sixth and Chestnut, stood the "State House Inn," 
built in 1693. It was still shaded by the great walnut 
trees that had stood there before the Welcome sailed 
from England, and on its porch William Penn had 
once sat to smoke his pipe. Here the lawyers, the 
plaintiffs and defendants would meet and dine, and back 
in the kitchen little bow-legged dogs ran around in a 
hollow cylinder and turned the jack for roasting the 
meat. It was easy enough to keep these little " spit- 
dogs " at work, but not so easy to call them to it. Once 
out of the cylinder away they would go, and when din- 
ner-time drew near the cooks flocked out of their kitch- 
ens and ran here and there gathering their frisky little 
dogs together. In the houses there were ten-plate 
stoves, and later on, in rich men's parlors, the Franklin 
stove ; prudent women carried foot-stoves to church, 
and the most comfortable man was the Quaker, because 
in meeting he kept on his hat, as well as his great-coat. 
In the gardens were lilacs and roses, lilies, snowballs, 
pinks and tulips ; and the housewives vied with each 
other in well-laden, symmetrical bushes of " Jerusalem 
cherries." 

The Presbyterians and Baptists, the Methodists and 



'' caspipina:' 93 



other denominations now had their churches, and the 
Episcopahans in the southern part of the city felt they 
needed another church. The Christ Cliurch vestry was 
warmly interested in the scheme, and the "proprieta- 
ries," the sons of William Penn, and themselves Church- 
men — for Penn and his two wives were the only Friends 
in the family — gave a lot of ground between Third and 
Fourth and Pine and Lombard streets, and in 1758 St. 
Peter's, as it now stands, was begun. It was at this 
time that the minister and Avardens of Christ Church 
sent a petition to the Bishop of London asking that 
young Jacob Duche, then at Clare Hall, Cambridge, 
should be ordained and sent to his native parish, where, 
in consequence of a growing congregation and a new 
church, he was much needed. Long and wearisome 
were the correspondences between the colonial churches 
and the Bishop of London, and not unfrequent were 
their misunderstandings. The Church of England would 
not consent to give America a resident bishop, and an 
American candidate for holy orders sometimes had to 
cross the ocean twice, once to be ordained deacon and 
afterward priest. The Bishop of London appointed 
ministers to the various churches, and exercised a gene- 
ral episcopal supervision over them, without a personal 
acquaintance with their needs, and it was this reliance 
on the English Church which in after years gave color 
to the charge of disloyalty during the Revolution. But 
at this time all went smoothly, and Mr. Duche came 
home ordained deacon and licensed to preach in Phila- 



94 A SYLVAN CITY. 

delphia. The two churches were very closely united. 
They had the same vestry and the same ministers. The 
pew rents were equal, and their ir^terests were in every 
way identical. 

And so, the new building being finished, on the 
fourth of September, 1761, the people met at Christ 
Church and went in procession down to St. Peter's — 
clerk and sexton at the head, then the questmen and then 
the vestry, two by two ; the Governor and the wardens, 
the officiating clergymen, the Governor's council and at- 
tendants, and, finally, all attending clergymen. The 
youngest minister, our "Caspipina," read all the ser- 
vice, except the absolution ; there was a baptism at the 
font, and Dr. Smith, provost of what is now the Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania, preached the sermon. 

It is not difficult even now to picture this service. 
The old dignitaries, with queues and ruffles are all gone, 
but the high pews, the stone aisles, the pulpit with its 
sounding board, the green and grassy churchyard still 
remain, and St. Peter's is, in effect, to-day what it was 
over a hundred years ago, when Governor Penn had his 
pew in the south gallery, and Benjamin Franklin came 
with other worshippers from the Mother church. 

After a few years had passed it happened that one of 
the two assistants, Mr. Sturgeon, resigned, and all the 
duties of the large parish fell on the rector. Dr. Peters, 
and Mr. Duche, and they felt a great desire to have Mr. 
Coombe and young William "White appointed as assist- 
ants. The vestry was willing, but it had cost heavily 




ST. PETER'S— THE PULPIT FROM WASHINGTON'S PEW. 



" CASPIPIJ^A.'' 97 



to build St. Peter's, and the revenues were not large. 
It was discussed, back and forth, and finally, the rector, 
who had a private fortune, offered to pay each of the 
young men one hundred pounds, and, thus assisted, the 
vestry offered Mr. Coombe two hundred pounds — which, 
by the way, enabled him to marry — and to Mr. White, 
with many compliments for his generous desire not to 
tax the income of the parish, they offered one hundred 
and fifty pounds. And thus, in 1772, William White — 
who, as a little bo}^, used to tie an apron around his 
neck for a gown, and with a chair for a pulpit, would 
preach to his little Quaker neighbor — entered on his 
long and beautiful connection with the churches. 

When 1776 came the political excitement was general, 
and the churches were full of it. Dr. Peters had grown 
old and weak ; Mr. Duche had succeeded him, with 
Messrs. Coombe and White as his assistants. When 
Congress set May 17th aside as a day of fasting and 
prayer, there was service in both churches and fervent 
sermons were preached. Then came the Fourth of July, 
and it was then the vestry met and struck the name 
of the King from the liturgy, and took down his portrait 
from the wall. Mr. Duche had acted as chaplain to Con- 
gress, and his people were full of patriotism. 

As the war went on, the Episcopal Church, how- 
ever, began to realize its peculiar connection with the 
English government, a connection that no Declaration 
of Independence had yet severed. The long and per- 
sistent refusal of the English Church to give the Ameri- 



98 A STLVAJS' CITY. 

cans a bishop complicated matters and divided alle- 
giance. It was not a question of Cliurch and State, for 
this had been tacitly settled long before, and in a few 
colonies only was there a State tax to support the 
churches. This was a far more vital question, and struck 
at the principle of existence as an Episcopal Church. 
Without a Bishop there could be no organization, no or- 
dination of priest or deacon, and so, in time, no admin- 
istration of the services and sacraments of the Church. 
If Americans now could have gone to England for or- 
dination it would have been refused to them as rebels, 
and if, on the other hand, they had confessed themselves 
loyal, the American congregations would have repudi- 
ated them. For these reasons, the clergy found them- 
selves in a perplexing position. They could not be true 
to the Church of England, of which they were still mem- 
bers, and to their country also, and everywhere there 
was confusion and uncertainty. Prayer was made for 
Congress in one parish and for George III in the next. 
Some of the clergy received their salaries from England, 
and in the South there were efforts made to seize church 
property and revenues on the ground that they still 
belonged to England, and so should be confiscated. 
Churches were closed, because the ministers, not yet 
released from vows of allegiance, preferred silence to 
action. 

In 1777 Mr. Coombe was arrested for disloyalty, and 
sent away with other prisoners, but he seems to have 
made his peace, as he was left in charge while Mr. 








CHRIST CHURCH FROM THE EAST. 



'' CASPIPmA.'' 101 



Duche went to England to meet charges of disloyalty 
from the other side. Mr. Duche's position was rather 
singular. He had started out, it seems, with ardent 
patriotism, and was glad to offer prayers in the first 
meeting of Congress. In the first fever, he hoped and 
he believed, but when reverses came he lost heart, and 
wrote a famous letter to General Washington, advising 
him to come to terms with the English Government 
while there was yet time. He possibly had more influ- 
ence over Mr. Coombe than over Washington, for the 
former soon followed him to England, but despondently 
enough, and, in a pathetic letter to the vestry, said : " To 
go into voluntary banishment from my native city, 
where it was ever my first pride to be a clergyman, to 
quit a decent competency among a people whom I affec- 
tionately respect and love, and launch out upon the 
ocean of the world, is a hard trial for nature. When I 
consider my little family whom I leave behind, and the 
difficulties to be encountered in providing them a heri- 
tage in a distant country, many, painful ideas crowd into 
my bosom. " These were some of the trials of the Tory, 
who had to choose between exile and hatred and con- 
tempt at home. 

Thus, Mr. White was left the only patriot out of the 
three Philadelphians ! That he still loved his old asso- 
ciates, however, is proved by his making the condition, 
when elected rector in 1779, that if Mr. Duche re- 
turned, he should be allowed to resign. But, although 
"Caspipina" came back after the war was over, he 



103 A SYLVAN CITY. 

never had any official connection with the parish again, 
but lived in the fine house his father had built for him, 
and, in 1798, he died and was buried by his wife at the 
east end of St. Peter's. In the "middle ayle " of the 
church, just opposite the rector's pew, two of his chil- 
dren are buried. 

In 1777, just after Mr. Coombe was indicted, the Coun- 
cil ordered seven of the bells belonging to Christ Church 
and the two at St. Peter's taken down to save them 
from the enem3\ The rector and vestry were much op- 
posed to this measure. The bells, they were sure, were 
in no danger from the British, but it was certain that if 
they were taken down it would not be easy to hang 
them again. The Council listened, but the bells came 
down, and one story says were sunk in the Delaware, 
while another asserts they were taken to Allentown, 
Pennsylvania. In good time all this was done, for when 
the British came they tore down St. Peter's fence for 
firewood and kept none of their promises to pay for it. 
The brick wall now around the churchyard was then 
built to replace that one. 

When the war closed the American Church was in a 
forlorn condition, and an entire separation from Eng- 
land was necessary, but first an American bishop had 
to be secured. Dr. Seabury, of Connecticut, was ac- 
cordingly sent over before the treaty of peace was signed, 
but political feeling was still strong enough to make the 
English bishops refuse to consecrate him, so he went 
to Scotland, where the non-juring bishops, themselves 



" CA8PIPTWA."' 105 



under political disabilities, performed the ceremony. 
There were evident reasons why this consecration was 
not altogether satisfactory, and, in 1786, Dr. White 
was elected Bishop of Pennsylvania, and going to Eng- 
land, was consecrated at Lambeth, and among the cler- 
gymen present again appears an old friend, Mr. Duche. 

In the meantime a convention of deputies was held in 
Christ Church to take measures for the organization of 
the church through the country, and the first General 
Convention, consisting of deputies from seven of the 
thirteen States, was present. During all these days 
and months of anxious planning. Dr. White lived in a 
house at Front and Lombard, where St. Peter's House 
now stands, and here all the preliminary steps toward 
organizing the American Church and preparing the 
prayer-book were taken. 

The story of the churches is now one of progress. St. 
James was built on Seventh street ; the first Sunday 
school in the country was established. Christ Church 
Hospital, founded by Dr. Kearsley in 1772, as a home 
for dependent women, members of the Church of Eng- 
land, was in operation. There were slight changes in 
the interior of the churches, such as moving the organ 
in St. Peter's, the presentation of fonts, the appro- 
priation of a pew to the President, and in 1828 there 
began to be a discussion concerning the separation of 
the three churches. The youngest, St. James, was the 
first to go, but Christ Church and St. Peter's clung 
together some years longer, until the union of the 



idQ A SYLVAN CITY. 

parishes became really cumbersome, and in 1832 there 
was a formal and legal separation and division of pro- 
perty, and all in a spirit of harmony and perfect good- 
will, and with the express condition that Bishop White 
should remain rector of the three parishes as long as he 
lived. 

In 1836 Bishop White died, a devout man and a 
godly preacher, taking with him the love of all who 
knew him, and leaving a name full of tender memories. 
He was buried at Christ Church, in his family vault, 
and no citizen of Philadelphia ever had a more sincere 
or more truly representative body of mourners at his 
grave. 

Since that time the two old churches have had days 
of steady prosperity. They have taken no share in cur- 
rent questions of ritual or of the absence of it, but, hold- 
ing to the faith of their fathers, have given the service 
according to the prayer-book. In St. Peter's, the rector 
of which is the Rev. Thomas F. Davies, D. D., daily ser- 
vice, morning and evening, has been held for very many 
years, and the parish continues one of the strongest and 
most active in the diocese. 

St. Peter's House, at the corner of Front and Lom- 
bard, is the centre of much of the active work in the 
parish. There meet the Guild for Workingmen, the 
Mutual Aid Societies, the schools and the Bible classes. 
There is a saving fund, a sewing class ; pleasant rooms, 
where men may assemble, smoke and play certain 
games. The children have their festivals, and the 



'' CASPIPINAr 107 



mothers their cheery meetings. All of this is superin- 
tended by members of the church, but much of the real 
work lies in the hands of those who are to be benefited 
by it. It is their own, and the interest they take in it 
accounts for much of its prosperity and vitality. 

And so the two old churches stand, one in the rush 
and hurry of trade, the other in all the quiet and shade 
of "Old Philadelphia" trees, and every year makes 
them dearer to their members. In Christ Church changes 
have been made, and in an evil hour it was " improved," 
but this year it has been restored to something of its old 
appearance. In St. Peter's the high old pews, the pulpit 
in the air, shadowed by the great sounding-board, tell of 
many years of praise and prayer, undisturbed by inno- 
vation, content to live in old ways and in the quietness 
of spirit that works earnestly and without the friction 
of change. 

Both Christ Church and St. Peter's have endowment 
funds, which will enable them, for many a long year to 
come, to keep their place among the active religious 
forces of the city. 




OLD SAINT JOSEPH'S. 



AN OLD CONFES 
SIGNAL. 



SAINT JOSEPH'S is the oldest Catho- 
lic Church in Philadelphia, and 
is one of those buildings, half 
ancient, half modern, which are 
of lasting interest because of their 
association with Colonial and Re- 
volutionary times. It stands in 
the busiest part of the present 
business quarter of the city, surrounded by the offices 
of the large railroad corporations, which are essentially 
typical of modern life. Almost all the other old land- 
marks in the neighborhood have disappeared. The 
Friends' Almshouse, with its little thatch-roofed cot- 
tages, has been torn down to make room for rows of 
neat brick offices, while the grass-grown graveyard 
where the Gabriel of Evangeline was buried, according 
to some authorities, has been replaced by well-laid, 
well-kept flower-beds. 

" How changed is here each spot man makes or fills !" 
Even St. Joseph's bears marks of the enterprise of a 
growing congregation, and a mania for pulling down 
and building up which inspired Philadelphians in the 

109 



110 A SYLVAN CITY. 

days when they were younger and not so wise. Though 
occupying tlie ground bought by its founder, the pre- 
sent churcli is in reaUty the fourth of the name, and was 
built in 1838. Its suggestion of age is due as much to 
its existence in such incongruous surroundings as to the 
actual number of its years. 

Passing down Willing's alley, between the tall build- 
ings of the Reading and Pennsylvania Railroads, the 
wayfarer comes to an iron gate, which might be supposed 
to belong to the latter were it not for the cross which 
ornaments it. It opens into an archway, not unlike 
those adjoining old-fashioned inns, beyond which is a 
large, square, paved courtyard. On two sides of this is 
the railroad office, at whose windows busy clerks can be 
seen bending over their books. At the lower end, di- 
rectly opposite the gate, is the church, a modest brick 
building, with long-pointed white windows, ivyless and 
vineless, and destitute of decoration, unless a marble 
bust of Father Barbelin and a tablet to his memory can 
be so called. On the right side of the courtyard is the 
house used as a dwelling by the priests and as a school. 
It is, like the church, built of brick. Its doorway has a 
quaint reminder of other climes and earlier ages in a 
little peep-window through which the lay brother can 
inspect all visitors before opening the door for them. 
By it hangs a large lamp, which throws its light on 
those who call after dark. These precautions are neces- 
sary, the brother told me once, for desperate charac- 
ters, within whose reach he would not trust himself alone, 




GATEWAY OF ST. JOSEPH'S. 



OLD SAINT JOSEPH'S. 



113 




OLD LAMP, ST. JOSEPH'S. 



sometimes come there. His 
words were an echo of me- 
diae vaUsm, and conjured up 
pictures of daring outlaws 
fiercely knocking at the gates 
of the monastery they meant 
to pillage. 

The interior of the build- 
ing is as barren to the curi- 
osity seeker as the exterior. 
Three rooms of the original 
house remain, but they have 
been thoroughly renovated. 

One or two quaint fireplaces have been preserved, but 
they are in upper rooms, into which none but the 
initiated can enter. The place is, as Heine says, "old 
without antiquity." There is here, however, one ob- 
ject which is of interest to all lovers of art or of Phila- 
delphia. This is the first large and important picture 
painted by Benjamin West, and presented by him to 
the Jesuits at Conshohocken. It represents a woman 
in the conventional Scriptural dress giving a child a 
drink from a little bowl, while an old man stands be- 
hind her and an angel hovers near the child. As this 
group was supposed to be the Holy Family, the picture 
was once hung over the main altar, where it remained 
for many years. But one day it was discovered — his- 
tory has not recorded how — that the artist had intended 
to commemorate in it the adventures of Hasrar and Ish- 



114 A SYLVAN CITY. 

mael in the desert, and so it was removed as inappro- 
priate to so conspicuous a position. It then became the 
property of the Jesuits at St. Josepli's, and a few years 
ago, the figures having become indistinguishable, it was 
cleaned. 

The first colonists of Pennsylvania respected freedom 
in religion. Had Penn been alone in their government 
the individual's right to clioose for himself in spiritual 
matters would never have been interfered with. But 
he and they were under British rule, and England was 
then bitterly intolerant where the Church of Eome was 
concerned. At first there were but few Catholics in 
Philadelphia, and these few conducted their ceremonies 
quietly and unobtrusively. Rumor occasionallj^ busied 
itself with stories of mass-houses^ and allusions were 
made to the presence of an old priest in the city. Work- 
men in passing a certain house at the corner of Walnut 
and Front streets had perhaps been seen taking off 
their hats and making the genuflexions Catholics prac- 
ticed in saluting their sacred altars. Already, in 1708, 
Penn, writing from England to James Logan, said : 
"With these is a complaint against your government 
that you suffer public mass in a scandalous manner ; 
pray send the matter of fact, for ill use of it is made 
against us here." But no definite measures were taken, 
and so long as their practices were not too "scandal- 
ous " Catholics were unmolested. Their number in- 
creased under this liberal rule until their brethren in the 
Catholic colony of Mar3'land thought the time had come 








1 



- <■. i^ 



^o- I 



dil::^' 




1 nil t- ij I ^ -^r 

i I ' 14-^ I I B ;'. .1111 




DOOR^\'AT OF THE FATHERS^ HOUSE. 



OLD SAINT JOSEPH'S: 117 

to give them a priest of their own. In 1732 Father 
Greaton, a Jesuit, was sent from Baltimore to estabhsh 
a chm-ch and attend to the spiritual wants of the faithful. 
The settlement of a priest in Philadelphia was attended 
by at least a chance of danger. The Sons of St. Igna- 
tius and St. Francis Xavier are not, however, men to 
be frightened by difficulties. But they are cautious as 
well as daring, and wise in their generation. Father 
Greaton, on arriving in the City of Quakers, borrowed 
the Quaker garb. It was not long before he changed it 
for his own black robes ; but when he built his church, 
which he called St. Joseph's, he made it accord as far 
as was possible with the Quaker style of architecture. 
Its survival of the fittest depended principally upon the 
manner in which he succeeded in making a fit, or in not 
attracting public attention. If it resembled closely the 
Friends' Almshouse, by which it stood, there was so 
much the less probability of its evoking the Quakers' 
objection to display and ornament. 

This was in 1733. In the following year it began to 
excite comment. A chapel with its own pastor and 
regular congregation could not pass unnoticed, when, 
up to the time of its establishment, even the casual 
presence of a priest had been subject of remark. Father 
Greaton's proceedings were referred to the Provincial 
Council and were carefully discussed at two meetings. 
The debaters, of whom Thomas Penn was one, could 
not decide whether, according to Colonial laws. Catholic 
celebrations were to be countenanced, or, following the 



118 A STLVAH CITY. 

statutes of William III, were to be prohibited. In- 
crease of liberality appears in the fact that no practical 
steps in either direction were taken after these de- 
bates — the matter was allowed to rest, and Father 
Greaton continued his work undisturbed. " The abbot 
dines off his singing," says the Spanish proverb, but 
in Father Greaton 's case it brought him very poor fare. 
The first priests in Philadelphia had nothing but their 
name in common with the monks of Melrose or of Wey. 
They were not makers of ''gude kale" or "jolly old 
boys," but hard-working men to whom a task had been 
intrusted and who could not rest until they had com- 
pleted it. As proof of their zeal and devotion we find 
that in 1747, only fourteen j^ears after its foundation, 
the church was considerably enlarged and so much im- 
proved that Kalm, the Swedish traveler, described it 
as a "great house, which is well adorned within and 
has an organ." The adornments could not have been 
very valuable or expensive, for the congregation was 
poor, their poverty, indeed, being one of the reasons 
which prevented the accumulation of treasures usually 
found in Catholic churches of a century's growth. 

The old prejudice against Romanists did not perish 
Math their increasing numbers. The people had not yet 
outlived the fear of Gunpowder plots and Smithfield 
fires. During the Revolution it was generally supposed 
that the Papists rejoiced when they heard bad news 
from the Revolutionary armies. But this supposition 
was based entirely on fancy. Catholics now boast that 








1 ~^i^-^^'^^;/,-» '^p- 






f: 










OLD SAINT JOSEPH'S. 121 

among them " there was not one Tory, not one false to 
his country." While bigotry lived on with the people, 
it disappeared from official circles. The latent liberality 
of Penn's successors was developed by external influ- 
ences. America's truest friends during her struggle 
with England came from Catholic countries. French- 
men and Spaniards brought with them their chaplains 
who celebrated mass in the city churches, and congress- 
men and officers assisted at their services as a mark. of 
respect. It is boasted by those who love St. Joseph's 
that Lafayette, the Counts de Rochambeau and De la 
Grasse, and all the gallant French officers who fought 
for us, have stood within its walls. When the war was 
over a Te Demn of thanksgiving was sung there by the 
request of the Marquis of Luzerne, and there is a tra- 
dition that at this ceremony Lafayette and Washington 
were both present. 

This church of the Jesuits is the root from which 
sprang many others. When its congregation became 
too large for its quarters, St. Mary's, St. Augustine's and 
the Holy Trinity were successively built. All three 
play a more active, animated part in historical records 
than St. Joseph's. It was at St. Mary's, on Fourth Street, 
that the first schism in the Philadelphia diocese occurred. 
There was a long dispute between the trustees of the 
church and the Bishop about its priest. Father Hogan. 
Party feeling waxed warmer and stronger until the con- 
test passed from words to blows. There were riots in 
which blood was shed. The Schismatics finally won the 



122 A SYLVAN CITY. 

day, and Father Hogan, though excommunicated, re- 
mained in possession. The CathoUcs of Philadelphia 
bade fair to repeat the warfare that of old disgraced the 
Church in Kome and Constantinople. All this hap- 
pened, however, when the local church was in its early 
youth. Now it is as peaceful and silent as St. Joseph 
himself could wish. The grass in the graveyard grows 
tall and wild, the graves are half-beaten down, and 
the gravestones look as if, at a touch, they might 
fall. This scene of neglect and decay is not without its 
historical interest. Commodore Barry, the ''Father of 
the American Navy," and of Revolutionary fame, is 
buried there, and not far from him lies Commodore 
Meade, a later and equally gallant officer. 

When forced from St. Mary's the Bishop took refuge 
at St. Joseph's and made it his Cathedral. Seldom ac- 
tively connected with the disorders in the diocese, this 
church, more than once, became the refuge of those 
upon whom the burden fell. During the anti-Catholic 
riots of 1844, when Protestants declared that the enemy 
was preparing a new Saint Bartholomew ; when houses 
with their owners still in them were burned to ashes ; 
when St. Augustine's burned to the music of the peo- 
ples' huzzahs and Orange airs played on fife and drum 
— even then St. Joseph's escaped unscathed. But the 
annals of those troubled times have recorded that it 
opened its doors to the priest and congregation of the 
destroyed churches', and that the Jesuits left them in 
full possession at certain hours, so that at mass and 




< ''vifii 



OLD SAINT JOSEPH' 8. 



125 



vespers it might seem as if they were still in their own 
churches. 

The Holy Trinity, which "looks like a coffin," as I 
have heard it described, is the last building in Philadel- 
phia in which the red and black bricks, once so common, 
were used. Attached to it is a graveyard, whose time- 
worn tombstones bear old French and Spanish names, 
recalling the days when the City of Brotherly Love wel- 
comed the San Domingo refugees. Here, too, Stephen 
Girard lay buried for many years before his body was 
removed to the college grounds. In one shady corner 
there is a slab, which covers the entrance to the vault 
belonging to the Sisters of Saint Joseph, and which is 
sacred to the memory of Sisters Camilla, Petronilla, 
Anastasia and many other good Sis- 
ters who have been long since forgot- 
ten. Even now, this reminder of tiiem 
would be unnoticed did not legend 
declare that here among her Sisters of 




126 A SYLVAN CITY. 

the Church reposes EvangeUne. And so ends the pretty 
romance. The lover is laid in a pauper's grave, while 
the beloved dies to the world when she clothes herself in 
religious robe-* and becomes only a Sister Camilla or 
Petronilla with the rest. This church, like St. Mary's, 
was the cause of schisms and clerical quarrels. Trus- 
tees and Bishops could not agree, and there followed 
"terrible times," as a good priest naively expresses it. 

There has been a great change of feeling in regard to 
Catholics since 1844. The old spirit of opposition was 
very bitter. The Hindoos say that whether the knife 
fall on the melon, or the melon on the knife, the melon 
suffers equally. And so it was with the Catholics. 
Whether they or the Protestants were at fault, it is cer- 
tain that they paid the penalty. Once the very sugges- 
tion of building houses for monks and nuns was like 
applying lighted kindling-wood to well-laid logs, and 
hurried into riotous outbreaks those who only waited 
the opportunity. But now, monasteries and convents 
stand in our principal streets and occupy the loveliest 
sites in our suburbs. Instead of the rumored mass- 
houses, there are handsome cathedrals and churches, 
with their seminaries, schools and asylums. The Catho- 
lic population is very large and devout, as any one at- 
tending early mass at St. Patrick's or St. Joseph's can 
testify, but it does not constitute a distinct element in 
itself, and this is creditable to both Protestants and 
Catholics. The liberality of Penn, fostered by a grow- 
ing spirit of toleration, has done its work. The days 



OLD SAINT JOSEPH ' S. 127 

have gone when a Presbyterian or CathoUc would only 
buy his butter or clothes from Presbyterian or Catholic 
farmers and tradesmen. Socially, Catholics are as 
widely apart as the people belonging to other sects. 
On political questions, too, they are divided, and are 
very far from forming a "solid Catholic Church" party. 
But on the subject of education they do stand aloof from 
their fellow-citizens. Their objection to the public 
school system is as strong now as it was in the days 
when it gave rise to riots, but they, having grown in 
power and wealth, are better able to meet the difficulty. 
The Church disapproves of purely secular education, 
and requires that science and art be taught in accord- 
ance with her doctrines. The age demands good and 
thorough education : ergo^ to keep up with the age, 
Catholics must supply it. Their efforts to do this have 
had some good results. Parochial schools, which were 
in a sad condition, are improving. Sisters of Mercy 
have been sent to the Normal School, so that they 
might learn how to teach their pupils after the most 
approved manner. These efforts, it is true, make no pro- 
vision for the higher education of children whose parents 
cannot afford or are not willing, after paying their taxes, 
to send them to private schools. But this want has been 
partly obviated by the measures of the late Mr. Thomas 
E. Cahill. At his death he left the greater part of his 
fortune for the purpose of establishing a Catholic High 
School for boyB over eleven years of age, who are to be 
selected first from the parish schools and then, if there 



128 



A SYLVAN CITY. 



remain vacancies, from the public schools. It is to be 
called the Roman Catholic High School of Philadel- 
phia. The fact is significant. The Catholic million- 
aire of 1878 devoting a fortune to the furtherance of 
Catholic education, presents a strong contrast to the 
solitary priest in Quaker disguise of 1732. 







"% 



THE OLD PHILADELPHIA LIBRARY.' 




N olden days a private 
library was a most com- 
fortable possession, be- 
cause it was one of the 
few things which a man 
could bring to a given 
point and then regard as 
finished. As late as 1731, 
when in Philadelphia the 
first circulating library 
which is on record was 
founded, no one dreamed 
of keeping up with cur- 
rent literature. Addison 
was dead, and the Tattler and Spectator had become clas- 
sics ; Pope's feeble yet resolute fingers were moulding 
English literature into rigid forms ; Goldsmith was a 
schoolboy, and Johnson an usher. Everybody read, and 
a few bought, but the scholar of elegant tastes would 
have thought Emerson's rule, never to read a book until 
it is a year old, absurdly enterprising. He was content 
to pore over the Horace he had inherited from his father, 
* See Introduction. 
129 



MINEKVA IN THE LIBRARY. 



130 



A STLVAJ^ CITY. 



and, if he made a new reading, he congratulated himself 
upon his originality. If, in his stately correspondence, 
he wished to quote, he preferred an author who reflected 
credit on his erudition to any one not yet indorsed by the 
learned. If he wished to consult authorities he could 
possibly get a permit to enter one of the great libraries, 
but he did not buy a volume simply for reference, and no 
one was mad enough to dream of circulating either 
books or crown jewels. Both were kept in their cases. 
Such young men as Johnson and Franklin might hire a 
volume from a bookseller, but it was not usual, and such 
a happy accident as the one that sent the news to Gov- 
ernor Burnet, of a young man named Franklin who was 




THE OLD BUILDING. 



THE OLD PHILADELPHIA LIBRARY. 



131 




THE NEW BUILDING. 



in a sloop at the ]^ew York wharf with some books, 
did not often happen. 

This was in 1724, when FrankUn was going back from 
Pliiladelphia to Boston, and just six years before he 
founded the "Junto" Chib. Tliis fermenting little 
power in Philadelpliia history was organized in a small 
ale-house to discuss such subjects as morals, poUtics and 
natural philosophy, but it was highly practical, and, 
while it studied up Roman civilization, it kept a keen 
lookout on Philadelphia interests. It told "new and 
agreeable stories," and when they heard of a failure in 
business the members sought after the causes. They 
discussed the successful man and his methods, and were 
particular to applaud the citizen who was said to have 



132 A SYLVAN CITY. 

done something creditable. Thej^ made a note of "young 
beginners lately set up," and decided upon the best way 
of helping them. If the character of a member was 
assailed his fellows came to his defense, and they aided 
each other in establishing advantageous friendships. 
They made themselves acquainted with every deserving 
stranger who came to town and asked if they could be 
of use to him. Never was there a more practical and 
keener little company, and the Philadelphia Library, 
the Philosophical Society, the University of Pennsylva- 
nia and the Pennsylvania Hospital are among its many 
direct descendants. The animating soul in all of this 
was the suggestive Franklin. He was always full of 
plans and busy about the best way of carrying them 
out. He drew up the rules for the club, and it grew to 
be like him. One day the idea of a common library 
came to him. Each member owned books which were 
constantly being borrowed by the others, and Franklin's 
plan was to put them all together in the club-room, where 
they would be easy of access for reference during the 
meetings, and each member could have the use of the 
whole collection. The club had by this time moved to 
the house of Robert Grace, who is immortalized in 
Philadelphia annals by Franklin's terse description of 
him as " a young gentleman of some fortune ; generous, 
lively and witty ; a lover of punning and of his friends," 
and so Franklin's plan being agreed to, each of the mem- 
bers gathered up his great folios and quartos, his chap- 
books, and all his literary treasures, and carried them to 



THE OLD PHILADELPHIA LIBRARY. 



135 



G-race's house on High, or Market Street, above Second, 
just opposite the Court-house. For fear of disturbing 
the family, they went up Pewter-plate Alley, through an 
archway, to the room over the kitchen, where they met, 
and great was the satisfaction Avith which this fine show 
of books, which filled one end of the room, was viewed. 
At the end of the year, however, many of the mem- 
bers pronounced this experiment of a librarj^ in common 



a failure, 
one had 
had been 
were torn, 




THE OLD LANTERX. 



No librarian had been appointed ; no 
been responsible for the books ; some 
taken away and not returned ; some 
and to prevent farther loss, each man 
took up his books and 
through Pewter-plate 
Alley marched home 
again. 

But Pranklin never 
let go of an idea that 
pleased him. He had 
tested the circulating 
library and he believed 
the experiment would 
be feasible and profit- 
able, so his busy mind 
occupied itself in devis- 
ing a better foundation 
than unorganized asso- 
ciation. He decided 
that, if he could get a 



136 A SYLVAN CITY. 

number of people to each subscribe fifty shillings as a 
purchasing fund, and then add an annual subscription 
of ten, he could make a fair beginning. 

He at once began to act upon this scheme, and so in- 
augurated — little as he suspected it ! — the great dis- 
covery of his life — the discovery of the Pubhc Circulat- 
ing Library ! He says in his little account of the enter- 
prise that this library gave rise to others all over the 
country, and together they " have improved the general 
conversation of the Americans, made the common 
tradesmen and farmers as intelligent as most gentlemen 
from other countries, and perhaps have contributed in 
some degree to the stand so generally taken throughout 
the colonies in defense of their privileges." 

To what the circulating library was to grow, and what 
share it was to take in the education and entertainment 
of the Anglo-Saxon race, even its founder's sanguine 
fancy could not foresee I 

At this time Franklin was about twenty-five years 
old, and, although well known as an industrious and 
enterprising young man, he could not have been an 
important citizen. He lived humbly enough, and, in 
addition to his printing office, he had a little shop where 
he sold stationery, and which his wife attended. He 
ate his bread and milk with a pewter spoon out of a por- 
ringer ; he wore a leather apron ; he trundled his goods 
home in a wheelbarrow, and when he worked at night 
he was shrewd enough to put his light in the window, 
and not under a bushel, so all the neighbors saw it, and 



THE OLD PHILADELPHIA IIBRART. 



137 



said he was in- 
dustrious and 
must be ofettinsf 
on ; and as no- 
thing succeeds 
Hke success, his 
advertising can- 
dle was a brilliant 
help. 

He had the pro- 
posal for his li- 
brary put into 
legal form by the 
conveyancer, 
Charles Brock- 
den ; it was made 
good for fifty 
years, and he 
then set out to 
find subscribers. 
He says : "I put 
myself as much 
as I could out of 
sight and stated 
it as the scheme 
of a number of 
friends who had 

requested me to venus, from the rush colt^ection. 
go about and propose it to such as they thought lovers 
of reading." 




138 A SYLVAJ^ CITY. 



In spite of this little prevarication, upon which the 
author congratulated himself, thinking it a proof of his 
want of vanity, the " lovers of reading " in the upper 
classes were hard to persuade, and when at last he ob- 
tained fifty subscribers, with Robert Grace's name lead- 
ing the list and his own second in order, they were 
nearly all young men of his own rank. The Rev. Jacob 
Duche, of Christ Church memory, who joined the com- 
pany in 1732, says in his " Caspipina " letters that " the 
librarian informs me that for one person of distinction 
and fortune there were twenty tradesmen who fre- 
quented this library. " This was in 1771, and shows how 
strongly the working-classes still appreciated the advan- 
tages which their fellow-craftsman had obtained for them. 

When at last the treasurer had forty pounds in his 
possession, James Logan, "the best judge of books in 
these parts," was consulted, a list made out, and Peter 
Collinson, one of the managers who was just going to 
England, undertook buying the books. This was in 
March, 1732, and all summer the new stockholders 
looked forward with impatience to October, and, when 
it came, bringing the books, they were delighted to find 
that Mr. Collinson had added Newton's " Principia" and 
"The Gardener's Dictionary" as a present. 

The books were placed on the shelves in the " Junto " 
room, still in Grace's house, a librarian chosen, and 
the library was open to the public. It Avas surpris- 
ingly liberal in its offers. It did not limit its advan- 
tages to subscribers, but offered the use of the books in 



THE OLD PHTLADELPAIA LIBRARY. 



141 




REQUEST BOX IN USE SINCE THE FOUN- 
DATION OF THE LIBKAKY. 



the room to any ' ' civil 
person," and, if he de- 
posited the vahie of a 
volume and added a 
small sum for its use, 
he could take it home. 
Nearly all the books 
now on the shelves 
were in English, few 
of the subscribers be- 
ing classical scholars, 
and all of them too prac- 
tical to care for books 
they could not read. 
This idea of utility has governed the purchases of the 
library through the entire hundred and fifty years of 
its existence, so that it has never "padded" its 
shelves. Mr. Lloyd P. Smith, who for years has been 
the faithful and competent librarian of the now con- 
solidated libraries — the Philadelphia, the Logan and 
the Ridgway — speaks with knowledge when he says in 
one of his papers: "Compared to the libraries of 
Europe and America, sustained by government or 
municipal appropriation, the Philadelphia Library is 
not large, but its hundred and thirty thousand books 
are well chosen. It does not possess that immense 
number of volumes of polemic divinity, which, during 
so many centuries, helped to deluge Europe with blood, 
nor the enormous mass of commentaries on the civil 



142 A SYLVAN CITY. 

law that appeared after the discovery of the Pandects 
at Amalfi. It contains but few specimens of controver- 
sial writings between the nominalists and realists, the 
Scottists and Thomists at one period and the Jansenists 
and Molinists at another. It has not, like the National 
Library at Paris, a room devoted to all the successive 
editions of a school-book. If, however, it is lacking in 
these, it does not follow that it cannot afford ample 
means for acquiring real learning. In administering 
the modest income of the company the directors have 
steadily kept in view the original and main object of the 
association, to form a library for home reading, and so 
have restricted their purchases in such departments as 
law, medicine, mechanics and natural history, to which 
special libraries in the city of Philadelphia are devoted, 
and yet have also been solicitous to avoid ephemeral 
productions of no real merit. Rare and costly books 
are added from time to time, and the income of the 
Loganian Library has gone to purchase such works as 
Lepsius' and Rosselini's Egypt, Kingsborough's Mexico, 
and the twelve volumes of the antiquities in the British 
Museum. The bequest of Dr. Rush's library has added 
many costly works on similar subjects, and the student 
of Egyptology will find in the Ridgway Branch nearly 
all the important works in his department." 

In these early days, however, there was little thought 
of a large or complete collection. The great fact was 
that there was a public library at all. Franklin kept up 
an active interest in the enterprise, and of course uti- 



THE 



RIDGWAY LIBRARY. 




THE OLD PHILADELPHIA LIBRARY. 145 

lized it. He devoted at least an hour every da}' to study ; 
he printed the catalogue, and so paid his annual tax for 
two years. In the second year he served as librarian, 
and the visit the directors paid to Thomas Penn when 
he came to Philadelphia doubtless originated in his 
shrewd brain, ever ready to see and seize an advantage. 
As might have been expected, Penn acknowledged the 
courtes}^ by a gift of books and apparatus. 

In ten years the collection had outgrown its quarters 
in Robert Grace's house, and it was removed to the 
State House, where Dr. Duche describes it as being in 
one of the wings that join the main building by means 
of a brick arcade. 

In 1750 James Logan, who in his youth was the friend 
of Penn, and in his old age the adviser of Pranklin, died 
and left to the city a curious and valuable legacy. He 
knew the value of his library as perhaps the very finest 
private collection of books in the Colonies, and he espe- 
cially prided himself on his hundred folios in Greek, his 
complete set of the Roman classics and the old mathe- 
maticians of Greece. It was altogether worth ten 
thousand pounds, and was in every way a royal legacy 
to Philadelphia. 

When the good old Quaker made his conditions with 
his trustees he created the only hereditary office in the 
country. His books were to have a separate place ot 
their own, and the collection was to bear his name. He 
endowed it forever, and decided upon a proper salary 
for the librarian, and then ordered that this librarian 



146 A SYLVAN CITY. 

should always belong to the Logan family, the oldest 
son of the oldest son being preferred. If it chanced 
that the heir did not see fit to fill the office he could 
appoint a deputy, but as long as a Logan of his line 
exists so long does this office belong to him. He also 
provided for trustees, mostly from his famil}^, directed 
that the Loganian library should be free to the public, 
and then, having carefully made all these provisions, 
the old man died and left the will unsigned ! His 
widow and children, fortunately, had no idea of dis- 
regarding his wishes, but at once confirmed them, 
and for forty years a plain building at the northwest 
corner of Sixth and Walnut streets was opened every 
Saturday afternoon, " to the end that all persons, and 
more especially those who have any knowledge in the 
Latin tongue, may have free admission." In 1792, by 
act of Assembly, the building, books and the endow- 
ment of 600 acres of land in Bucks County were handed 
over to the Library Company on the same trusts. 

Meantime, little occurred until 1773, when the books 
were removed to Carpenters' Hall, remaining all through 
the Revolution. The directors gave the use of the books 
to Congress, and when it hastily removed and the Brit- 
ish were about entering the city, the}^ were alarmed 
about the safety of the collection, and some of the mem- 
bers were vehement in urging its immediate removal. 
To this others objected. The risk of removal seemed to 
them more serious than that of remaining, and so there 
was hurried, anxious argument, but as no quorum could 




RUSH MEMORIALS. 



THE OLD PHILADELPHIA LIBRARY. 149 



be obtained the books were left on the shelves, and when 
the British actually were in occupation the officers were 
glad to use the books and pay for them, and even after 
the room was used as a hospital for soldiers no injury 
was inflicted on the library. 

And so time went on. The British left the country 
and sailed back to England a wiser and a smaller army. 
Congress was again in Philadelphia. General Washing- 
ton was riding to Christ Church in his carriage-and-four ; 
the Quakers approved the result of the war, and the 
Tories were becoming reconciled. Everywhere hope 
was stronger than depression, and the breath of a new 
life filled the country. In Philadelphia trade prospered, 
ships were coming and going from the wharves, and fac- 
tories were building. There was a general movement 
westward toward the Schuylkill River, and the library 
was keeping pace with all this activity. It had been en- 
larged by the addition of books from several small and 
unsuccessful organizations, and had received some lega- 
cies. While Benjamin West was in England he was one 
day in Kent at the house of the Rev. Samuel Preston, 
and while painting the portrait now in the library he 
lightly asked his host what he meant to do with all his 
books. Mr. Preston, smiling, said he did not know ; he 
had no children to inherit them. "Then," said the 
painter, "why not give them to the Philadelphia Li- 
brary ?" and so went on to tell the Englishman of its 
origin and purposes. Mr. Preston, listening, was inte- 
rested, and the end of it was he did leave his library to 
the Philadelphia Company. 



150 A SYLVAN CITY. 

All this prosperity and feeling of permanence made 
the directors feel the}^ ought to have a building of their 
own, and in 1789 they held a meeting, at which Bishop 
White presided, and agreed to build as soon as one hun- 
dred new members were added to the company. This 
condition must have been quickly fulfilled, as in August 
of the same year they laid the corner-stone of that de- 
lightful old building at Fifth and Library streets. Ben- 
jamin Franklin was now an old man of eighty-three, 
resting after long and busy years of anxiety, enterprise 
and honor. He was not able to lay the new corner- 
stone, but he wrote the inscription, yet so modestl}- that 
he made no mention of his own share, and the direc- 
tors had to alter it and insert his name. It runs as 

follows : 

be it remembeked 

in honor of the philadelphia youth, 

(then chiefly artificers) 

that in mdccxxxi 

they cheerfully, 

at the instance of benjamin franklin, 

one of their number, 

instituted the philadelphia library, 

which, though small at first, 

is become highly valuable and extensively useful, 

and which the walls of this edifice 

are now destined to contain and preserve, 

the first stone of avhose foundation 

was here placed 

the thirty-first day of 

AUGUST, 1789. 

Then when this corner-stone w^as laid the " 3'oung ar- 
tificers " of another generation came forward and asked 




Willi' ^I^T,, 
THE PHILOSOPHICAX. SOCIETY. 



THE OLD PHILADELPHIA LIBRARY. 153 

to be allowed to help with the new building and to take 
their pay in stock, and one would fancy that these shares 
would be of special value to those who inherit them. 

What Philadelphian does not remember this library ! 
Surely never was there a building more quaint, more 
quiet, more thorouglily pervaded with the silent wisdom 
of many books. Again it had followed the State House, 
but now stood opposite on Fifth street. On the pave- 
ments were crowds of people hurrying by, and every- 
where groups standing to talk. Nowhere was there 
more haste and more delay. Omnibuses had their day 
of rattling past, cars sped along, the prison wagons and 
the carriages of lawyers rumbled up the street, and yet 
he who ascended the winding flat steps and passed 
under the statue of Franklin and on through the faded 
leather doors, passed into silence and into a deep peace. 
Case after case of books lined the walls, and ran up in 
galleries to the ceiling. Roomy old arm-chairs stood in 
alcoves by colonial tables. On one side ticked a clock of 
Franklin's and on the other one of William Penn's, 
while one which once belonged to Oliver Crouiwell 
marked the day of the month as well as the hour. The 
librarian sat at Penn's desk ; the pictures of the bene- 
factors of the library hung on the front of the galleries. 
Illuminated missals, black-letter books, copies of Eliot's 
Indian Bible, files of colonial newspapers — all sorts of 
curious and rare works slept in their cases. On the 
walls hung many portraits. There was the old libra- 
rian, Zachariah Poulson, with the hat he never removed 



154 A STLVAW CITY. 

pulled tightly down on his ears ; the smooth, handsome 
face of Mr. Preston, and Logan's fine head. On one of 
the galleries was the great bust of Minerva, six feet 
high. It had stood behind the Speaker's chair at Sixth 
and Chestnut streets the day that General AYashington 
arose to open the Colonial Congress. Who can forget 
just how it all looked, and what an air of age, of fine 
content rested over the old place ! The books had for- 
gotten all controversy, the problems had all been set- 
tled, and nothing was left but to believe and to be quiet. 
In a room just back of the main hall was the "Loga- 
nian" Library, and from it ran another, long and nar- 
row, made into dim alcoves by cases of books ; and 
here, in dear seclusion, was the scholar with his pile of 
lexicons and classics, or the child curled up in a great 
colonial chair, happy with some great volume of en- 
gravings. 

These were the days when everything seemed perma- 
nent, and the record of stock coming from father to 
son, and from son to grandson, seemed a matter of 
course. No one could have been surprised because in 
eighty-seven years the London agents were of one 
family, and that in ninety-seven years there should be 
but four librarians was something to be expected. 

To belong to the library was a credential of "fam- 
ily," and if any one wanted to see the typical "old Phi- 
ladelphian" that was the place to seek him. Every 
year added to its credit, and when some enterprising yet 
cautious citizen would speak of a new and fire-proof 





fl 






FRANKLIN INSTITUTE LIBRARY. 



\ 



'm0. 



//: 



THE OLD PHILADELPHIA LIBRARY. 157 

building, it was like sacrilege, so dear had the old walls 
grown. And yet the new building came, and coming, 
added another to the curious legacies to which this 
library is heir. 

There lived in Philadelphia not many years ago, a 
physician. Dr. James Kush, who was a son of the Dr. 
'Benjamin Rush of Revolutionary days. The son in- 
herited the father's scholarly taste, and nothing was as 
much to his liking as a quiet room and time for study. 
He used, however, to practice medicine, driving about 
in a yellow gig, and when he had completed his round 
going eagerly home to his books. When he was a young 
man in London, he not only greatly admired Mrs. Sid- 
dons, but he made scientific research into the method 
nature had bestowed on her, and on his observations 
founded his famous work on the Voice. He also gave 
some lessons to James Murdoch, and — who would not 
like to believe ? — the quality that set this actor apart 
from others, is, perhaps, just what he has from Mrs. 
Siddons by gift of Dr. Rush. By the rule of contra- 
ries, this lover of solitude, of study, of unbroken quiet, 
thought fit to ask Miss Phoebe Ann Ridgway to 
marry him, and she, governed by the same law, con- 
sented. This young lady did not love either solitude or 
quiet. She liked to read and to study, but she wanted 
to talk about her books, and she had a preference for 
authors who were living and could be asked to a dinner 
party. Her father was an old Pennsylvanian, and 
during the time he was Consul at Antwerp the first Na- 



158 A SYLVAN CITY. 

poleonic wars were going on, and the keen old Quaker 
turned so many honest pennies that Miss Phoebe brought 
her husband a large fortune. This the latter valued 
because it gave him time to devote to his researches, to 
write his books and increase his library. His wife had 
quite as much pleasure in it, but she had no mind to 
bury any of it in musty books. She built herself a house 
out Chestnut street, near Nineteenth, large enough to 
hold eight hundred guests. In her dining-room she had 
twenty-five tables, which could be put in a long row to 
seat a great company, and with satin furniture of gold 
and blue, with mirrors everywhere, with gilt tables and 
marble figures, with velvet and gold, she made the house 
a wonder of brilliancy. An army of servants ran here 
and there. When she gave a great party they lighted six 
thousand wax candles. Everywhere there was life and 
movement, people arriving, people departing, and in the 
midst of it all moved Mrs. Rush, large and ruddy, good 
humored and generous. She was not ignorant, and she 
knew what was good, but she was not critical, and she 
took a great interest in peoj)le. If she liked the poet 
who read his unpublished poems to her, that was 
enough, even if his verses were bad, and her pity for 
the artist who had no other patron, gave her belief in 
his future. She did not blame people because they had 
not succeeded, but gave her warm, strong hand to many 
a poor soul who had never before known so friendly a 
grasp. Her husband, in a remote corner of the building, 
far oft' from all this going and coming, this dancing and 



THE OLD PHILADELPHIA LIBRARY. 



159 



singing, this talk of art and of people, wondered over 
Mrs. Rush's likings, but he never interfered, and she liked 
best to have him content and to live her own life. She 
had her own definite ambitions, and she meant to revo- 
lutionize Philadelphia society. She saw no reason why- 
society should be broken into so many sets, or why so 




STAIRWAY AT HISTORICAL SOCIETY S EARLY HOME 



many good people should not know each other ; so from 
her spacious house she sent invitations here and there, 
and she bid to her great balls every one she thought 
had a claim of family, fortune or merit. At first people 
came willingly enough, but they soon discovered that 
they did not like such promiscuous company. The 



160 A 8TLVAN CITY. 

families who lived south of Market street were not dis- 
posed to make visiting acquaintance with those who 
lived north of the sacred Brahmin boundary, and the em- 
ployer did not want his daughter to dance with his clerk. 
They had no common ground of interest, and instead of 
the balls having a cosmopolitan character, they defined 
classes even more closely than before. People began to 
understand who it was they ought not to know, and 
each set drew into itself with stiffer reserve. But Ma- 
dame Rush did not lose heart. She wished to be a leader 
in society, and she aimed at having a large constituency. 
She had the ambition of a Napoleon, and she meant to 
make new boundary lines and abolish fictitious differ- 
ences. Her fight was gallant, but although she brought 
all that money, ambition and hospitality could do to 
help her, she failed, and she conciliated no one. She had 
no solvent to work with, and her alien forces would not 
combine. Still she did her part in forcing asunder the 
walls that were hardening around " old Philadelphia," 
and fresh air rushed in. 

In 1857 she died, aged fifty-eight, and then for twelve 
years the great house stood silent and closed. In the 
centre of fashion and life, its darkened windows made it 
look like a tomb. Dust settled over everything, and 
grass grew where it could. Dr. Rush's life, however, 
went on without alteration. He likely enough enjoyed 
the silence, and the gloom represented to him a sane and 
sensible life. In this dead quiet he, too, thought of his 
fellow-citizens, and had his own visions of a hospitality 



THE OLD PHILADELPHIA LIBRAE T. 161 

that would be elevating and of permanent value. He 
had no frivolous ideas of entertainment, and he loved 
art just so far as it was justified by science. He had in- 
herited all his wife's property, and he worked out a 
scheme that would make the city his heir, and at the 
same time raise a noble memorial to her memory ac- 
cording to his own ideas. 

So the Ridgway Branch of the Philadelphia Library 
is Dr. Rush's legacy to the city and his monument to 
his wife, and no man and woman have ever slept in a 
more magnificent tomb than this one. It stands in the 
midst of a spacious green lawn, a granite copy of the 
Parthenon, 220 feet long and 105 feet wide. Its great 
columns and broad steps, the magnificent centre hall, all 
lead to the quiet enclosure where, on a plain marble 
slab, is written : 

SACRED 

TO THE MEMORIES OP 

MRS..PH{EBE ANN RUSH, 

DAUGHTER OF 

JACOB AND REBECCA RIDGWAY, 

AND WIFE OF 

JAMES RUSH, M. D. 

BORN, DECEMBER 3d, A. D. 1799 ; 

DIED, OCTOBER 23d, A. D., 1857 C 

AND OF 

JAMES RUSH, M. D., 

THIRD SON OF 

DR. BENJAMIN AND JULIA (NEE STOCKTON) RUSH. 

BORN, MARCH 15tH, A. D. 1786 ; 

DIED, MAY 26th, A. D., 1869. 

Around these sleepers are rooms and galleries filled 
with over eighty thousand of the books the husband 



162 A SYLVAJS' CITY. 

loved. The Loganian Library is here, and the Preston, 
.and all the works on science and learning which were 
printed before 1856 and owned by the Philadelphia Li- 
brary. The Doctor was careful that nothing frivolous 
or unmeaning should spoil the sacred sanctity of this 
building. ' ' Let it not, ' ' he said in his will, referring to the 
library," let it not keep cushioned seats for time-wasting 
and lounging readers, nor places for those teachers of dis- 
jointed thinking, the daily newspapers, except, perhaps, 
for reference to support, since such authority could 
never prove, the authentic date of an event." These 
halls were not to be " encumbered with the ephemeral 
biographies, novels and works of fiction or amusement, 
newspapers or periodicals, which form so large a portion 
of the current literature of the day." The hospitality 
the husband offered was magnificent, but it drew the 
lines the wife had tried to break, and made a most 
exclusive use of her fortune. 

These were some of the conditions in this will which 
made the stockholders of the Philadelphia Library hesi- 
tate before accepting the legacy. It was easy to assent 
to the condition that the hall was never to be used for 
lectures or exhibitions, and no collection or museum 
was ever to have a place there. It was easy to agree 
that not more than one-fourth of the directors should 
belong to any one of the learned professions, and that 
it should never be united to any other body, corporate 
or political; but it was not well to accept a building 
that would exclude the majority of books in circulation 




HISTORICAL society's EARLY HOME — THE BAY WINDOW 



THE OLD PHILADELPHIA LIBRARY. 165 

among readers, nor to carry the old library from its 
convenient quarters far down town to the site chosen 
by Dr. Rush and insisted upon by his executor. . Long 
and perplexing were the consultations of the directors, 
and many the legal appeals, but in vain, until at last 
they cut the knot. The old Library had a building 
fund of $125,000, and had bought a lot at the corner of 
Locust and Juniper streets. Here they decided to erect 
a convenient and commodious building for the circu- 
lating department of the Library, where the public 
could find all the "disjointed," "ephemeral" and 
" popular " literature in which it rejoices. This de- 
cision left the executor free to use the million of dollars 
left by Dr. Rush in building the splendid sarcophagus 
at Broad and Christian according to his own mind. 
In this way the terms of the will have been met, and, 
perhaps, wisely, but it adds another to the "special" 
libraries so numerous in Philadelphia. We have the 
Philosophical, in its delightful rooms in the old State 
House building ; the Historical, the Franklin Institute, 
the Athenseum, the different professional libraries ; 
but, with the exception of the Mercantile, we have no 
library where all departments of literature are repre- 
sented. All the others are limited and devoted to 
special subjects. The great pity is that Dr. Rush did 
not see his fine opportunity. He had money and he had 
learning. If, in addition, he had had something of -the 
broad, clear vision of Benjamin Franklin, the liberal 
public spirit of James Logan, or a share of the generous 



166 A SYLVAN CITY, 

impulse of his wife, he could have continued their work 
in a congenial spirit. He could still have given Phila- 
delphia what is without question the finest library 
building in the world, but not have surrendered to some 
one else, as he has, the honor of founding a comprehen- 
sive, great Free Library in his native city. 



QUAKER AND TORY. 



Trk traveler who walks the streets of Philadelphia 
to-day with the idea that in them are to be seen the dis- 
tinct elements that in times past went to make up the 
life of the city finds small trace of the characteristics 
for which he looks. The distinctive dress of Quakerism 
is practically a thing of the past. The country mem- 
bers may still come in to Quarterly or Yearly Meeting 
in the scoop bonnets and broad-brimmed hats, the drabs 
and browns of an earlier day, but the city Quaker is 
modified in spite of himself. Their protest is still felt ; 
for the elders in smooth-banded hair and lines of dra- 
pery unbroken by "trimming;" for the younger who 
have yielded to its seductions, in a refusal of all tawdry 
forms of ornaments and a subdued and quiet elegance 
both of material and hue, which makes the Philadelphia 
woman the best dressed woman of the day. 

But neither on Arch Street, the very home and sanc- 
tuary of Quaker Conservatism, nor on Spruce and Pine, 
once the abiding place of stately and indignant Tories, 
scornful and skeptical over all new theories of a govern- 
ment without a king, can the seeker find more than a 
suggestion of the sharply-defined dividing lines of the 
past. Their traces are not hidden in brick and mortar, 

167 



168 A SYLVAN CITY. 

or lost with fast-vanishing landmarks, but are moulded 
unconsciously in the mind of the people, by all old con- 
ditions, and show to the student of social science to- 
day the form of growth and development to be expected 
from such seed. 

The Tory still lives and moves and has his being, but 
even to him come gleams of the spirit of the age ; " van- 
ishings, black misgivings," it may be, but all pro- 
phetical of a time when his individuality, with its 
obstinacy and obtuseness and self-satisfied absurdities, 
will also be historical — perhaps, at last, even mythical. 

To-day, side by side with the man of the present, he has 
been heard to say, terrapin-plate in hand and wine-glass 
delicately held and eyed : ' ' Sir, had I not had the fortune 
to be born in a sphere of society which regards litera- 
ture as a disreputable pursuit, I might, without scruple, 
say I should have been a shining light in the American 
intellectual firmament." 

This is the Tory with a pedigree, and possessing many 
of the virtues of the man with a pedigree who, in spite 
of himself, must seek to live up to its traditions. The 
middle-class Tory, the counterpart of the " Philistine " 
element in England bewailed by Matthew Arnold, has 
all the prejudices, all the stupidities of the first-men- 
tioned variety, with no mitigation of culture or fine 
breeding. From one of these, like the English Philis- 
tine owning a gig and settled into a prosperous dullness, 
came the other day a comment equally significant of 
the speaker's mental attitude : 



,m-T^T"MM VI ,,M, ., „ ■■< rm^^^2.M}\ 




QUAKER AND TORY. 171 

" Philadelphians don't care as much for Atlantic 
City as they did. You see nobody goes there much 
now but Germans and Jews and editors and that kind of 
people.'''' 

The Quaker has outstripped the Tory, but even the 
Quaker tarries in the race. Too much terrapin is said 
to be the reason for the loss of intellectual supremacy 
once claimed by Baltimore, and too much old family, 
which is only a synonym for an over-supply of terrapin, 
may be the cause of certain features perceptible to the 
looker-on, but the existence of which is denied by the 
subjects of such observation. To-day is inexplicable 
unless one returns to the time in which these forms, 
crystallized now into something almost unalterable, 
were still chaotic, moved by each fresh current, yet 
even then slowly gathering shape and character. 

The Philadelphia of to-day has settled into a fixed 
and seemingly unchangeable mould. One passes through 
street after street of houses so like one another that at 
last the belief becomes fixed, that one has only to touch 
some central knob to see each front slide up and reveal 
every family doing exactly the same thing at the same 
moment in the same way. The uniformity is first 
amusing, then irritating, then depressing, and is ac- 
cepted at last as the solution of certain otherwise unex- 
plainable characteristics. Monotony long continued has 
deadened perception, mental and spiritual. Progress is 
unnecessary where every one is perfectly comfortable 
and convinced that improvement is needless, and thus 



172 



A SYLVAN CITY. ' 




an ambitious and active-minded man finds it easy to 
become practically master of the state : the statute 
book still holds laws abolished in nearly every other 
part of the Union, and the course of public action 
on any point drags to a degree that drives the few 
eager reformers well nigh to madness. Nevertheless, 
reform goes 
on. The spirit 
of the found- 
ers remains. 
Packed and 
moulded, as 
the mass may 
be, in a heavy 
consistency, 
the leaven is 
there and works secretly to its destined end, the story of 
the past giving the key to the future. 

With the opening of 1750 Philadelphia was still a 
"green country town," each house surrounded b^'^ gar- 
dens and trees and fine orchards so numerous that 
peaches were fed to pigs. Professor Kalm, the Swedish 
naturalist, whose "Travels into North America" are 
still of interest to the botanist, marveled at the profuse- 
ness of all forms of food, and wrote rather dolorously : 
"The country people in Sweden and Finland guard 
their turnips more carefully than the people here do the 
most exquisite fruits." 

A profitable, though somewhat circuitous and in- 



JOHN BARTRAM, HIS BIBLE. 



1 1'mmmmmmMW' 




QUAKER AND TORY. 175 

volved commerce benefitted all. Toleration attracted 
immigrants, and life was on a milder and easier basis 
than in the !N'ew England Colonies, partly from the 
gentler orthodoxy, partly because natural aspects were 
seldom strenuous or terrible. Quakers then numbered a 
little more than a third of the population, and discounte- 
nanced all amusements, but the rest of the people en- 
gaged freely in many forms of innocent enjoyment. ]S^ew 
England, under the dynasty of the Mathers, was going 
through the blood-curdling and soul-crushing terrors of 
that religious system which to-day has its reaction in 
the "Free Religious Association" and the "Radical 
Club." Whitfield for a time darkened the Philadelphia 
sky with the terror no man ever better succeeded in 
exciting, but the efiect soon passed, and the mild Phila- 
delphians returned to their easy-going lives. Quakerism 
had meant deep spiritual perception, and in the begin- 
ning a crusade against all accepted facts and theories of 
the time, that set them a hundred years in advance. 
With nothing to protest against in the new home their 
zeal naturally died, and for the most of them there 
remained and continued only the features by which 
Philadelphia is best known, " thrift, uniformity, sedate- 
ness, cleanliness and decorum, with a toleration of all 
opinions and observances." 

Social life among them was in one sense unknown. A 
people who relied on the inward light and scorned the 
learning of this world, shut ofi" at one touch all usual 
sources of entertainment. Hospitality alone remained 



176 A SYLVA]^ CITY. 

— hunting, shooting, dancing assembUes, music or fairs 
being all i^rohibited, but their loss being made up, as far 
as might be, by lavish entertainment. At Stenton, con- 
sidered "a palace in its day," lived James Logan, the 
life-long friend and secretary of Penn, a man, like 
many of the early Quakers, of learning and scholarly 
taste, whose library, bequeathed at his death to the city, 
is still a rare and costly collection, being especially rich 
in legal and medical treatises. The reign of drab had 
not begun, for at the decorous dinners and suppers given 
at Stenton there is record already given of "white satin 
petticoats worked in flowers, pearl satin gowns or peach- 
colored satin cloaks ; the white necks were covered with 
delicate lawn, and they wore gold chains and seals en- 
graven with their arms." 

It was the reign of wigs. Even the serious-minded 
Quaker yielded to the spell. Penn's private expense 
book shows four in one year. Even paupers claimed 
them as an inalienable right, and a ship-load of con- 
victs having been brought over were imposed upon the 
unfortunate Pennsylvanians as " respectable servants " 
by simply dignifying each one with a cheap but vo- 
luminous wig. Franklin, disdainful as he was of show 
and artificiality, looks out on us in the earliest por- 
trait extant from a stiff and tremendous horse-hair wig. 
Wristbands reached nearly to the elbows, met there 
by short and deep-cuffed coat sleeves, and snowy ruffles 
covered tlie manly bosoms of Quaker and Tory alike. 
But elegance, save in a few isolated instances, was 



-1^ 





^' X Mm^ 



HAMILTON HOUSE, WOODLANDS CEMETERY. 



QUAKER AND TORT. 179 

impossible in any modern sense. There was wealth 
enough for the general comfort ; pauperism was practi- 
cally unknown, but life was frugal, limited, and, to our 
modern apprehension, inconceivably slow. The daily 
newspaper was undreamed of, a monthly, the size of a 
sheet of Congress paper, holding all the news demanded 
by the Colonists. Carpets, save in one or two of the 
more stately houses, were an undesired luxury, fresh 
sand being considered more healthful. Spinning and 
weaving were still household occupations, and Franklin 
rejoiced in being clothed from head to foot in cloth 
woven and made up by his energetic wife. The store 
formed a part of the dwelling house, and if a mer- 
chant had more than one clerk he was regarded as 
doing a perilously large business. "Society" then, as 
now, was made up of a very small number ; a single 
set, that even as late as 1790 consisted only of "the 
Governor, two or three other official persons, a great 
lawyer or two, a doctor or two, half-a-dozen families 
retired from business, a dozen merchants and a few 
other persons . . . who had leisure enough for the 
elegant enjoyment of life." 

The amusements of this society before the Revolution 
were of the same order as prevailed in the mother 
country. The young man of good family and ex- 
pectations devoted himself to deep drinking and the 
practical jokes of beating watchmen, twisting off door- 
knobs and knockers, changing signs and all the light 
diversions made familiar to us in the literature of the 



180 



A STLVAI^ CITY. 



eighteenth century. For the rich this was merely 
youthful effervescence, and young William Penn was 
the leader in excesses that necessitated his recall to 
England, and half broke his father's heart. For the 
son and for various succeeding generations of Penns the 
old Admiral's traits proved powerful enough to be the 
inheritance of most of his descendants, who passed from 
Quakerism to Toryism with perfect facility, headed by 
young William Penn, who, furious at Quaker interfe- 




ON THE WISSAHICKON — THE OLD LIVEZEY HOUSE. 



QUAKER AND TORT, 



181 



rence, annoiuiced himself a Church of England man, 
and relnained so to his death. 




GARDEN GATE OF THE OLD LIVEZEY HOUSE. 



In the market-place stood pillory, whipping-post and 

stocks. Women were publicly whipped as late as 1760, 

and the "public whipper " had a salary of ten pounds 

a year. The country people who came in twice a week 

over the almost impassable roads, regarded this as one 

of the essential sights of market-day, which in 1729 

found a poetical describer. Then, as now, Jersey was 

chief purveyor, the wagons crossing over by way of 

Market street ferry, the market itself extending up the 

street. 

" An yew bow's distance from the key-built strand 
Our court-house fronts Caesarea's pine-tree land ; 
Through the arch'd dome and on each side the street 
Divided runs, remote again to meet. 
Here eastward stand the trap for obloquy 
And petty crimes — stocks, post and pillory ; 
And, twice a week, beyond^ light stalls are set, 
Loaded with fruits and flowers and Jersey's meat. 



182 A SYLVAN CITY. 

Westward, conjoin, the shambles grace the court, 
Brick piles their long extended roof support. « 
Oft west from these the country wains are seen 
To crowd each hand and leave a breadth between." 

The farmers who came in from the west were often 
nih'ed, and the condition of the roads was such that 
pleasure-riding was practicall}'^ almost unknown, there 
being up to 1780 not more than a score of pleasure ve- 
hicles in the entire province. The internal commerce of 
the state was chiefly by means of pack-horses, and as 
market-wagons increased they were either provided with 
lock-chains for the wheels, or a heavy log was tied to the 
wagon and trailed on the ground, its weight being essen- 
tial in the mountain roads, cut into deep gullies on one 
side, while the other was made up of blocks of sandstone, 
the descent being very like going down a flight of stone 
steps. The " Conestoga wagon ' ' still in use is modeled on 
the plan of the earliest vehicles. An adventurous Quaker 
who left Philadelphia in 1784 to make a home in the 
interior of the state, has left a description of the jour- 
ney worth the consideration of those who grumble at 
less than thirty-five miles an hour. The family were 
father, mother, three young children and a bound boy 
of fourteen. Three pack-horses formed the train. On the 
first rode mother, young baby and the table furniture 
and cooking utensils ; the second carried the provisions, 
plow-irons and agricultural tools ; the third bore a 
pack-saddle and " two large creels, made of hickory 
withes in the manner of a crate, one over each side of 
the horse, in which were stowed beds, bedding and wear- 



QUAKER AND TORY. 185 

ing apparel. In the centre of these creels was left a 
vacancy, just sufficient to admit a child in each, laced 
in, with their heads peeping out therefrom." Behind 
this company paced two perplexed and serious cows, the 
source of supplies for the journey. On the road, hardly 
wider than an Indian trail, they were often met or over- 
taken by long trains of pack-horses, those from the 
west hesinnif peltry and (jinseruj; those going west, kegs 
of spirits, salt and packs of dry goods. 

The Quaker, however, seldom went beyond reach of 
his own people and special means of grace, or, if he mi- 
grated, did it in bodies, small colonies at intervals leav- 
ing the quiet comfort of the city for the wild woods of 
the interior. Each year found them a little more torpid 
and peace-loving — a little less disposed to be disturVjed 
in the daily routine of money-making and money-saving. 
The city grew steadily, and prosperity seemed universal, 
but the Arcadian innocence often supposed to be the 
condition of the early settlement was by no means the 
real state of the case. Politics were quite as corrupt 
then as now, and Proud's " Historj^ of Pennsylvania" 
gives facts which show not only hotly-contested elec- 
tions, but that the office-seeker was the same creature 
then as now. The unmanageableness of American poli- 
ticians had become apparent as early as 1704, when 
Penn records that men who were modest enough when 
lost in the crowd in England, in America "think no- 
thing taller than themselves but the trees." 

Tory and Quaker, though sharing equally in the 



186 A SYLVAI^ CITY. 

government, were often at cross-purposes, the necessary 
calls for militia being always seasons of heart-burning 
for both sides. The younger generation of Quakers 
were often renegades from a faith growing more and 
more rigid as to form, and with the stormy days of the 
Revolution many joined the army, and thus read them- 
selves " out of meeting," though restored in some cases 
on a qualified confession, or expression of sorrow that 
circumstances had forced them to violate their prin- 
ciples. 

But the period from 1740 to 1775 was one of quiet 
prosperity and a gradual increase, not only of wealth, 
but of means for intellectual enjoyment. Franklin's 
vivid intelligence had made its way, his leathern apron 
proving no bar to admission into a society the decorous 
dullness of which needed every mitigation he could give. 
Shrewd, far-sighted and keen, his humor never degene- 
rated into cynicism, and his catholic and tolerant nature 
made friendship with even the most opposing elements 
possible. From a dispute in a tavern parlor to a church 
quarrel, he listened to difterences and suggested solu- 
tions with a calm countenance schooled to hide the in- 
ward chuckle. 

Agitators brought their schemes for reform ; conser- 
vatives their plans for repression. The fierce and irre- 
pressible little Benjamin Lay insisted upon his co-ope- 
ration in a scheme to convert all men to Christianity, 
and, with Michael Lovell and Abel Noble, the Trans- 
cendentalists of that period, met at Franklin's house to 



^yr 




QUAKER AND TORY. 189 

discuss preliminaries. Unluckily a grand dispute ensued 
as to methods. The apostles waxed louder and louder, 
each determined to convert the world after his own 
fashion. Benjamin Lay pounded the table and shrieked 
at the top of his piercing voice, and Franklin, who 
looked on in quiet amusement, finally separated these 
champions of peace and good-will, advising them to 
give up their project until they had learned to govern 
themselves. 

John Bartram, called by Linneeus " the greatest 
natural botanist in the world," had made a home for 
himself near Gray's Ferry, where he built a stone house 
and planned the botanic garden, in which, though long 
diverted from its original purpose, may still be seen some 
of the rare and curious specimens of trees and plants col- 
lected in his many botanical expeditions. Born a Quaker, 
he retained to the end the best features of that creed, 
living a life of constant charity, maintaining always the 
natural and equal rights of man, and thus naturally 
among the early protesters against slavery, but of so 
cheerful a temperament and winning a manner that an- 
tagonism was impossible in his presence. At seventy 
he undertook the last of his many journeys, which had 
led him thousands of miles in the Southern States in 
search of materials for natural history and for his bo- 
tanical collection. Every scientific man abroad came 
into friendship and correspondence, and his house was 
the seat of a large though always simple hospitality, the 
earnest student in any direction finding welcome and as- 



190 A STL YAW CITY. 

sistance. One son succeeded to the place, himself a dis- 
tinguished florist and botanist, as well as ornithologist, 
and confirmed in his natural bent toward the same life by 
every influence about him. Franklin had had his after- 
noon of kite-flying, and had talked it over in Bartram's 
sanded parlor. Rittenhouse, pale and quiet, had warmed 
in describing his orrery, or planning for better instru- 
ments and facilities in the new observatory. Rush and 
Shippen and the corps of physicians, famous then as 
now, talked over plans of the new University. Kalm, 
the Swedish botanist, made his headquarters there, and 
every distinguished visitor from abroad found his way to 
the wonderful garden, the fame of which had brought 
Bartram the appointment from England as " Botanist 
to his Majesty George the Third." The Philosophical 
Society was safely launched, and a powerful factor in the 
intellectual life of the city, and Thomas Penn had made 
gifts of both books and instruments, though his chief 
interest was in extending Church of England principles. 
James Logan, one of the most versatile yet deeply 
learned men of the time, an ardent Quaker, and yet as 
ardent an advocate for resistance to British encroach- 
ments, made one in every meeting, formal or infor- 
mal, where scientific questions came up, representing a 
development which to many Quakers seemed almost 
impious. The doctors especially were regarded as not 
much better than ghouls, and one gaunt and spectral 
Quaker maiden named Leah for many years was accus- 
tomed at intervals to pass the night, wrapped in a blan- 



C'^s 



</«^ _^ 







QUAKER AND TORT. 193 

ket, and stealing among the graves of the Potter's 
Field for the purpose of frightening them away. 

The up-town and down-town boys had, till the British 
occupation, nightly battles with sticks and stones, on 
one occasion suspending it to gaze upon George Boyn- 
ton, a young Philadelphian of such extraordinary per- 
sonal beauty and fascination that boys and men alike 
turned to look after him. " The most admirable among 
the fashionable young gentlemen of his day," says an 
old chronicle, " sought after by young and old." From 
the Tory Governor, Richard Penn, married to Mistress 
Polly Masters and holding high revelry in the stately 
house on Market Street, to Parson Duche's mansion, 
notable as himself, all welcomed the young Apollo, be- 
loved by Quaker and Tory alike, and bitterly mourned 
when taken by the fever of 1793, which for a time 
threatened to depopulate the cit}'. 

Up to the date of the British occupation the various 
elements of the city had remained as distinct as oil and 
water. French Huguenots, refugees from the St. Do- 
mingo massacre, the Germans who made up the chief 
population of Germantown and the northern part of the 
city, the Swedes who still held their place along the 
Delaware, the English who retained all old habits and 
as yet had by no means taken on the features of the 
new life, and last the Quakers, more and more Tory in 
their sluggishness and terror at anything which threat- 
ened a suspension of profit, made up as diverse a set of 
elements as any city could show. To let one another 



194 A SYLVAN CITY. 

thoroughly alone was the one point held in common, 
and not till a common danger forced united action did 
any real harmony of purpose prevail. Franklin's strong 
will, concealed by a gentle and conciliating manner, 
carried all before it, and it was in great part through 
his influence that the younger Quakers in many cases 
entered the army and the elder forgot both prudence 
and principles and subscribed freely for popular needs. 
In spite of war the city did not cease to grow, and, as 
the seat of Congress and the scene of the first years of 
independent government, became of more importance 
than any other in the new confederation. Life changed 
in all ways. The low houses of the first period had 
been replaced by buildings, the height of which was pro- 
tested against by the old people, who regarded them as 
an invitation to both fire and lightning. Robert Morris, 
cautious, shrewd and successful in all his financial man-^ 
agement of public interests, had begun the impossible 
palace known as " Morris' Folly. " It covered an entire 
square from Chestnut to Walnut and Seventh to Eighth. 
The architect's estimates had been for $G0,000, but 
nearly that sum had been expended before it reached 
the first story above ground, there being two and srane- 
times three underground, made up of innumerable 
arches, vaults and labyrinths. Marble had been used 
for the whole, ornamented in relief, but before the roof 
was on, impatient and indignant creditors, for whom no 
money remained, found their only resource would be to 
pull down, block by block, the vast mass of material 



QUAKER AND TORY. 



197 



which, put into smaller houses, might possibly bring 
some return. The " Folly " became a row of buildings 
on Sansom Street, and only ^.^^ 



the underground laby- 
rinths, so massively built 
as to defy the reconstruct- 
ors, remain, and may pos- 
sibly puzzle future explo- 
rers. \ 

Many houses of lesser 
magnificence, but of equal 
interest, had been built 
during the second fifty 
years of the settlement, a 
few of which still remain, 
but chiefly in and between 
the city and Germantown, 
improvements having done 
away with most of those 
in the business part of the 
city. Whitpain's "Great 
House," Bingham's Man- 
sion, Loxley's house and 
Bathsheba's Bath and 




KERAMICS 



AT STENTON. 



Bower have left no trace, 
but in Germantown many of the first buildings are still 
standing, one of the most interesting of these being the 
old Livezey house, occupied by families of the same 
name for two hundred years. 



198 A SYLVAN CITY. 

Continental money had had its day, ruining many of 
the holders and bringing about a rate of prices only 
equaled in the last days of the Southern Confederacy. 
An original bill of purchases in 1781 is still to be seen, 
reading as follows : 

Capt. a. McLane : 

January 5, 1781. Bo't of W. Nicoll. 



1 pair boots, .... 

%% yds calico at $85 per yard, 

6 yds of chintz at $150 do. 

41/^ yds moreen at $100 do. 

4 handkerchiefs at $100 do. . 

8 yds quality binding at $4 per yard, 

1 skein of silk, .... 



$600.00 
752.00 
900.00 
450.00 
400.00 
32.00 
10.00 

3,144.00 



If paid in specie, £18 10s. 
Received payment in full for W. Nichols, 

JoNA. Jones. 

Like that in Kew York, the Tory element of Philadel- 
phia welcomed British occupation as the final settle- 
ment of the insolent revolt of the lower class against 
the high, and joined with the British officers in such 
carnival as has never since been seen. The Walnut 
Street Prison was crowded with starving prisoners, the 
survivors for years telling stories of abuse and incre- 
dible suffering, only paralleled by Andersonville in our 
own da}^ Germantown had seen one of the sharpest 
battles of the war, and hardly a country seat but was 
filled with its quota of wounded and dying. Many were 
burned, many more riddled with bullets, and to-day 
under many a quiet lawn rebel and oppressor are lying 



QUAKER AND TORY. 



199 



side by side, all unknown to the generation who walk 
above them. In the midst of all this sorrow and mourn- 
ing was projected one of the most extraordinary per- 
formances the country has ever known. Balls, regattas, 
any form of amusement that could be devised, were held 
at every point of British occupation, but the story of the 
Meschianza at Wharton's country seat, at Southwark, 
the 18th of May, 1778, reads like a page of the "Arabian 
Nights. " From the Green Street Wharf, then the only 
one of any size 
above Vine St., 
the brilliant 
company em- 
barked at half- 
past four in the 




BEFORE THE FIRE — STENTON. 



200 A SYLVAJ^f CITY. 

afternoon, in a "grand regatta" of three divisions. Three 
llat-boats, each with its band of music, preceded them ; 
an avenue of grenadiers g,waited them at the fort below 
Swedes' Church, with light horse in the rear. Here a 
square law^n, one hundred and fifty yards to a side, 
formed the area for a tournament. Two pavilions held 
on the front seat seven young ladies dressed in Turkish 
costume designed by Major Andre, who acted as stage 
manager, while in their turbans were the articles to be 
bestowed upon their several knights. Seven "white 
knights," in white and red silk, mounted on gayly- 
caparisoned horses, followed by esquires in the same 
colors, entered to the sound of trumpets, the herald pro- 
claiming their challenge to the "black knights," whose 
entry in black and orange was quite as imposing. All 
the forms of a knightly tournament were faithfully fol- 
lowed. Four encounters, each with a different weapon, 
took place. All then ascended a flight of steps leading 
into a profusely-decorated hall, where the knights first 
received their favors from the ladies, and then drank 
tea to restore their weakened energies. 

The ball-room awaited them, festooned with flowers 
reflected from eighty-five mirrors borrowed from the 
citizens, with lustres between. Dancing and magnifi- 
cent fireworks occupied the evening. Up to midnight 
four rooms, each with its sideboard of refreshments, had 
served to keep up the spirits of the company ; but as 
that hour sounded, folding doors, skillfully concealed. 



r^^^-^'^jX 








COURT HOUSE, SECOND AND HIGH STS. — , 
BUILT 1707, DESTROYED 1837. 



QUAKER AND TORY. 203 

sprang open and displayed a saloon two hundred and 
ten feet by forty feet, decorated with flowers, brilliant 
with wax lights, over three hundred of which were on 
the supper-tables, while twenty-four slaves in oriental 
dresses, with silver collars and bracelets, served the 
throng. Major Andre wrote of it as " the most splendid 
entertainment ever given by an army to its general," 
the whole expense having been borne by twenty-two 
field officers. The only American gentlemen present 
were aged non-combatants, but fifty young unmarried 
American ladies and many more married ones were 
there. One month later, the rebels, supposed to have 
been rendered hopeless, marched in and took posses- 
sion, many of the gay knights having barely time to 
escape. Later on the American officers of Washing- 
ton's command made a great ball for the officers of the 
French army, and at first refused to invite the Mes- 
chianza ladies. Second thought included them, but in 
the fear that they might lack partners lots were drawn 
and every means taken to prevent uncomfortable feel- 
ing, though privately the memory rankled for many 
years afterward. 

The Tory Quaker and the practically Quaker Tory 
are still to be seen, but the nineteenth centur}'^ is doing 
its universal work, destrojing all characteristic lines, 
and another generation or two will render distinction 
well-nigh impossible. Less interesting than in the past, 
the curious observer must be content with reproducing 



204 A STLVAN CITY. 

the old conditions for himself, finding consolation for a 
more and more general uniformity in the fact that 
though individuality may be temporarily destroyed, it 
must again assert itself in time, and in more attractive 
forms than anything the past has known. 




WiiiAfi&iffm r/'h ^/ o ^ - ^n<r/// ',n I ""^ /' ^mmmmmMA v^* 



ALLEGORICAL GROUP FOR THE NEW FOST-OFFICE. 
Designed by S. French. 



THE PHILADELPHIA POST-OFFICE. 




IFTY YEAKS hence, when 
postal savings banks and 
government telegraph and 
express offices shall have 
been successfully establish- 
ed throughout the United 
States; when the domestic and international money 
order and registry systems shall have been brought to 
practical as well as theoretical perfection ; when rapid 
transit local deliveries shall have superseded the present 
somewhat incipient carrier service ; when absolute 
honesty shall have been insured in every department 
by tenure of office, depending upon the elTiciency and 
fidelity of employes ; and when, in fine, the mails shall 
have become the channels through which valuables of 
every class shall be transported at nominal rates and 
with entire safety — the contemporary merchant will 
look back on these days of fancied progress with as 
much amusement as we are wont to regard the meagre 
postal facilities which were enjoyed by our forefathers 

207 



208 A SYLVAN CITY. 

in early colonial times, when the departing mails 
were "published" in advance on the meeting-house 
doors. 

Scarcely more than a century ago all correspondence 
was transmitted from Philadelphia to New York by 
lumbering stage-coaches, which occupied three days on 
the journey, while twenty-four days were consumed by 
the post between the first-named point and Newport, 
Virginia. Letters, in those days, were charged accord- 
ing to distance, the rates varying from eight to twenty- 
five cents. 

The first post-office in Philadelphia was presided over 
by Colonel Bradford, in 1728. When Benjamin Franklin 
was postmaster, in 1737, the post-office was held in his 
private house. In his autobiography Franklin thus 
writes of his appointment : " I accepted it readily, and 
found it of great advantage, for, though the salary was 
small, it facilitated the correspondence that improved 
my newspaper, increased the number demanded, as well 
as the advertisements to be inserted, so that it came to 
afford me a considerable income." The business of the 
office and the additions to its machinery must have 
increased very rapidly during the next half century, 
as the commissions accruing to the position in 1797 ex- 
ceeded by several hundreds of dollars the present salary 
of the postmaster. In the year 1789 Robert Patton was* 
placed in charge of the office, and an interesting adver- 
tisement relating to the establishment of post-coaches 
for the ensuing year, with the dates of their arrival and 



THE PHILADELPHIA POST-OFFICE. 211 

departure, was inserted by him in a magazine of that 
date, in which it is set forth that : 

"The Western Mail for Lancaster, York-Town, Carlisle, 
Shippensburg, Cliambersburg, Bedford and Pittsburg, will 
close on Thursday, the 7th January, at sunset, and after 
wards on every second Thursday through the year, and 
will arrive on the next Thursday morning." 

The notice concludes with the following advice : 

"As there are several places of the same name in the 
United States, the merchants and others are requested to 
be very particular in the direction of their letters, in order 
to prevent their being wrong sent ; and when letters are 
not for a post town, the nearest post town to the place 
ought to be mentioned. As the utmost punctuality is ne- 
cessary, it is requested that letters will be left in due time, 
otherwise they will be detained until next post day." 

The Philadelphia Post-Office has been located since 
1728 in about twenty places, and has been presided over 
by thirty postmasters. In 1834 it was situated in the 
Philadelphia Exchange. When the present building 
was first occupied by the department in 1863 it was con- 
sidered one of the most extensive and completely-ap- 
pointed establishments of the kind in the country. Now 
it is wholly inadequate for the proper transaction of the 
immense business which falls to its share. The interior 
of the office presents the appearance of a huge bee-hive. 
All the three hundred clerks are busily engaged in 
the discharge of their respective duties, and the three 
hundred carriers are occupied at their tables " set- 
ting up their hands " for delivery. The postmaster 
is deeply absorbed in answering his voluminous mail, 



212 A SYLVAN CITY, 

or may be seen circulating among the various depart- 
ments overseeing the work — with the smallest details 
of which he has made himself familiar — suggesting 
improvements here, or instituting reforms there, and 
giving personal supervision to every branch of the 
service. In the front of the office two men are en- 
gaged in raking from a broad shelf into baskets the 
letters and papers which are constantly showering in. 
These are immediately carried to the stamping tables 
for cancellation. Here a dozen men may be seen stamp- 
ing at the rate of one hundred letters each per minute, 
and the thump, thump of the descending stamps is 
heard from dawn until far into the night. Farther 
back in the office sacks of papers are being hauled into 
the "ring " and emptied on tables, where men are en- 
gaged in sorting them by states and cities, which is 
done by pitching them into square partitions arranged 
around the circle and extending up to the ceiling. On 
the outside of these shoots canvas bags are attached by 
means of hooks. When the apertures become full, bolts 
are drawn, the backs are opened and the papers tum- 
bled into the sacks, which are then tied up and shipped 
by mail wagons to the various depots. In the stamp and 
postal card departments clerks are constantly occupied 
in supplying the demands of purchasers, the sales of 
some days aggregating nine thousand dollars. For the 
accommodation of citizens residing at a distance from 
the office, the postmaster has recently established, in 
various parts of the city, fifty agencies for the sale of 




''iiiiMMMMlMMMUUi 

THE merchants' EXCHANGE AS A POST-OFFICE. 



THE PHILADELPHIA POST-OFFICE. 215 

postage stamps. The extent of business transacted in 
the Philadelphia Post-Office may be understood when it 
is known that during the past year nearly three millions 
of dollars were disbursed from the money order win- 
dows. 

The free delivery system, under the direct supervision 
of the postmaster, extends over the entire county, cov- 
ering an area of one hundred and twenty-nine square 
miles, and requiring the services of about four hundred 
and twenty-five letter carriers, or nearly eight hundred 
employes in all. Besides the central office there are 
twenty-six sub-stations located in different sections of 
the city, the largest of which are the West Philadelphia, 
Germantown, Manayunk, Trankford and Eichmond 
offices. For the prompt conveyance of carriers from 
the main office to the central and outlying districts 
thirteen coaches are in constant use, Philadelphia being 
the only city where this admirable system is in vogue. 

There is, perhaps, no more promising field for the 
study of human nature in all of its phases than a large 
post-office. Many and curious are the characters who 
daily resort hither to inquire for letters which never 
arrive, or who find in the bustling corridors a fascina- 
tion which they cannot resist. For 5'ears a shabby 
man appeared regularly at the retail stamp window, as 
the clock was striking one, and purchased a one-cent 
stamp. This seeming mania finally being noticed by 
the clerks, acquired for him the appellation of "Old 
One-One." 



216 A SYLVAN CITY. 

"•Mister," said a rural-looking female one day, "will 
you give me a three cent stamp — and put it on for me, 
please, as I am a stranger in the city." On another oc- 
casion, a man brought to one of the windows ten dollars 
in silver, which he desired to have sent by registered 
mail. When informed that he could not send so much 
coin in a letter, but must procure a note, he replied, 
with great disgust, "An' shure wasn't I afther bring- 
in' a bill wid me at furst, whin I see signs around on the 
finces, 'posi no hills^'' so wid that I had me note changed 
into spashee to plaze yez." A few days before Christ- 
mas a stout lady presented for mailing a large paper 
box, which, upon inquiry, was found to contain two 
enormous, freshlj-made mince pies, which she wished 
to send to her daughter in California. On being told 
that such articles were unmailable, she berated the 
clerk soundly for his impertinence, and, with great indig- 
nation, departed in quest of a more accommodating office. 
An aspirant for diplomatic honors one day handed to 
the foreign clerk a formidable-looking document a,d- 

dressed to — 

INIK. Minister K . 



Care of Queen Victory, 

England, 

and after waiting to see that it was properly disposed 
of, turned away with an air of one who would not be 
trifled with. 

Many letters are consigned to the mails whose direc- 
tions are puzzling and often illegible. The average 
Celtic and Teutonic superscription is particularly be- 



THE PHILADELPHIA POST-OFFICE. 



219 



wildering, usually covering the face and frequently both 
sides of the envelope. The writing of proper names is 
often more original than orthographic, and although 
men are constantly employed in deciphering these ad- 



./ 



■■■* .- 












COLLECTING. 



230 A SYLVAH CITY. 

dresses, they often meet with examples which tax tlieir 
ingenuity to the utmost. A letter was received at 
Philadelphia bearing the somewhat comprehensive di- 
rection : 

LIZBET HrXKYFOOT, 

ritsbuig Bhiladelfy 

West, Camden 

conty Pensilvaiiie merakaie, 

and another directed to — 

Mr. , 

Frill Delpuldobur 

Sproose Stree 

No. 410131, 

with the request "*Je not ford plese reture " written in 

the corner. 

A third addressed to — 

B u , 

Pokscaunte Perkasie 
Stetsen 
Panecyvlia, 

was finally translated : 

Bucks County, 

Perkasie Station, 

Pennsylvania. 

It is needless to say that such letters find their way 
eventually to the " Tet Leter ofire " at ^''Washingthon,''^ 
as one correspondent had it. About Christmas time 
the average small boy lays his plans for a rich harvest of 
toys. He floods the mails with epistles addressed to 
3f7'. Santa Claus, Esq., Santa Ckms Station, North Pole, 
Pennsylvania, and each year bundles of such letters are 
forwarded to the Dead Letter Office. 

The new Post-Office building, now in course of erec- 
tion on !N^inth Street, is believed by some to be very 



THE PHILADELPHIA POST-OFFICE. 



223 



appropriately located on the spot where Franklin drew 
the hghtning from the clouds. If such is the case, the 
noble structure will form a fitting, though unintentional, 
memorial to one of our earliest postmasters, who after- 
ward became Postmaster-General of the United States. 
The new building, which is under the supervision of 
James G. Hill, Esq., of the Treasury Department at 
Washington, is in the style of the Itahan renaissance, 




AT THE RAILROAD ELEVATOR. 



the material being granite from Virginia and Maine. 
The mass of the structure will be four and the remain- 
der six stories in height. The main frontage is on 
Ninth Street, where the lock-boxes, general delivery and 
stamp windows will be situated, with minor fronts on 
Chestnut and Market Streets. With the exception of the 
Chicago Post-Office, it will be the largest and most com- 
plete building of its kind in the country. The post- 



224 



A SYLVAy CITY. 




A MOMENT OF LEISURE. 



master's private office will be 
located in the southeastern 
corner, while the assistant 
postmaster and cashier will 
occupy the apartments to the 
west of the Chestnut Street 
entrance. The court, which 
is to be covered, will be de- 
voted to the carrier and mail- 
ing departments, and the 
registry rooms will be situ- 
ated in the rear of the building next to Market Street. 
The southern half of the second floor will probably 
be occupied by the money order and inspector's de- 
partments, while the northern portion is intended to 
be set apart for the United States Courts. Four ele- 
vators will run from the basement to the upper sto- 
ries, and every modern improvement which can in any 
way facilitate the transaction of business, or contribute 
to the comfort and convenience of the public, will be 
added. The fine group of statuary which surmounts 
the main entrance, or rather stands high above it, 
with the dark slate of the mansard for a background, 
is the work of Mr. S. French. It is composed of three 
allegorical figures representing Law, Armed Force, and 
Prosperity. On the left is a male figure seated leaning 
on a sword, on the right is Prosperity with the overflow- 
ing cornucopia of classic fable, while between and above 
them both stands a female figure clad in a coat of mail 



THE PHILADELPHIA POST-OFFICE. 



327 



and holding aloft the table of the law, in recognition of 
the hoped-for future when armed force shall be only the 
subject of the higher authority represented by reason. 
The architects promise to have the building ready for 
occupancy within the next two years, provided the 
necessary appropriations are forthcoming, and, when 
finished, Philadelphians will pride themselves in the 
possession of one of the handsomest and roomiest post- 
offices to be seen in any city of the globe. 




OFF FOB THE DEPOT. 



CITY HALL SQUARE. 



The story of City Hall Square is a tale of a dream that 
came true. When one realizes that at the time William 
Penn planned his city it was a wilderness and the site of 
City Hall Square was a woods visited only by wild birds 
and probably an occasional deer, and, of course, known to 
the Indians dwelling in this vicinity, the gifted vision of 
the city's founder becomes appreciated. 

In 1682, or 1683, as some later writers will have it, the 
city of Philadelphia was planned, and the feature of that 
plan was the provision for a great civic center, by far the 
most ambitious piece of city planning the world had seen 
up to that time. It is quite true Penn's idea has been 
carried out only in part, but his intention that Broad and 
Market Streets should be the city's business and govern- 
mental center has been more than realized. It is today 
what Penn, in his most creative dreams, would have had 
it. But in his time it was soon understood that, like all 
the ideas that make the world a better place to live in, the 
plans were far in advance of the founder's generation. 

Although the original description of his city, the capital 
of his Province, provided for the clearing of an open square 
at the junction of the town's two principal thoroughfares, 
and for the erection of a meeting house, court house, and 
provincial Government buildings around it, it was not 
until the beginning of the last century that the Square 

229 



230 A SYLVAN CITY. 

was formally laid out, and even then it was a circle, and 
not a square. 

It is not known definitely when the fourteenth street 
from the Delaware River received its present name, Broad 
Street, and neither is it possible to assert upon any au- 
thority whether the first Friends' Meeting House was 
erected at the junction of these thoroughfares or whether 
it was built at TweKth and Market Streets, which, accord- 
ing to Holme's plan of 16S3, was the city's center. There 
are those who are willing to accept this latter view, and, 
indeed, it is said this view was entertained by the pro- 
jectors of the building of the present Friends' Meeting 
House on Twelfth Street south of jNIarket when it was 
erected in IS 12. 

There is the evidence of Robert Turner, one of the first 
piu'chasers of lots in Philadelphia, that a meeting house 
was erected at the junction of Broad and High (or Market) 
Streets in 16S5. Under date of August 3d, in that year, 
he wTote to Penn, "We are now laying the foundation of 
a new brick meeting house in the Centre (60 feet long and 
about 40 feet broad), and hope to soon have it up; there 
being many hearts and hands at work that will do it. A 
large meeting house, 50 feet long and 38 broad, also is 
going up in the front (street) of the river for an evening 
meeting." 

If the builders of the Center INIeeting had cudgelled 
their brains to select an inconvenient site for their meeting 
house in 1685, they probably could not have improved on 
the location they decided upon as the city's "center." 



CITY HALL SQUARE, 231 

In that year Broad and High Streets, whether we assume 
it was the twelfth or the fourteenth street from the 
River, certainly was far from the city's actual center. It 
is difficult to imagine the state of mind that could con- 
ceive the city could quickly be made to reach out so far 
westward. But when we reahze that no city or to-VMi in 
America became so quickly populated as Philadelphia 
during the first century of its existence, we are able to 
pardon the pride that at least displayed both enterprise 
and vision. However, the meeting house was erected 
and the members attended services for a time. They 
picked their way out Market Street on Sunday mornings 
along the rough cartway, or road, which represented the 
thoroughfare in the early days of the city. Part of the 
distance the path led through woods, and the good Friends 
disturbed the wild turkeys and an occasional deer as 
they passed. The futility of maintaining such an incon- 
venient place of worship resulted in the abandonment of 
the meeting house in a short time and the removal of the 
edifice. 

In the letter of William Penn to the Committee of the 
Free Society of Traders, published in London in 1683, 
which contains Holme's "Portraiture" or plan of Phila- 
delphia as laid out by him, there is a description of the 
city as planned. From this we learn that "In the center 
of the City is a Square of ten acres; at each angle are to 
be Houses for public affairs, as a meeting house. Assembly 
or state house, market-house, school-house, and several 
other buildings for public concerns." While Penn, who 



232 A SYLVAN CITY. 

lived to be an old man, did not see this grand idea for a 
civic center realized, his words were, in a sense, prophetic, 
for at one time or another all these buildings for "public 
affairs," excepting only a state house, have been located in 
Cit>^ Hall Square, and this locality today is really the 
city's center; its heart, from which the arteries stretch 
out to every section of the municipality, although it is 
not now the geograpliical center, which point has been 
calculated to lie in the vicinity of Fifth Street and the 
New York Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad. 

Wliile it has been asserted frequently that Franklin 
conducted his epochal experiment with a kite in the 
summer or fall of the year 1752 in the vicinity of Nmth 
and Chestnut or Market Streets, the fact is, the location is 
not mentioned by Franklin in his letter to his friend 
Peter Collinson. The experiment is sometimes referred 
to as having been made on the commons, near the city. 
This leaves the location open to some doubt. At the time 
the Commons was the site of the present City Hall Square, 
and, as it was an open space, and probably had been since 
the city was first laid out. one might be justified in suggest- 
ing that Broad and Market Streets saw the first experi- 
ment with a kite and a key by which Franklin demon- 
strated that lightning and electricity were the same. 

There is all the more reason to believe that Franklin 
went to Broad and Market Streets to conduct his lightning 
experiments when it is understood that about that time 
the Center Square, or Commons, was the people's pleasure 
grounds. It was the Park of Philadelphians in the mid- 



CITY HALL SQUARE. 233 

eighteenth century. There they held their picnics; there 
they raced their fast horses, and on hoHdays it was the 
end of their strolls. It was a natural place for Franklin 
to conduct his experiments by reason of its remoteness 
from the populated part of the city and by reason of the 
openness of the Commons, for lying between the broad 
street and the built-up part of the city lay a fairly thick 
patch of trees, known generally in those days as the 
Governor's Woods, 

However, Dr. William Smith, provost of the University 
of Pennsylvania, in the course of his Eulogium delivered 
the year after Franklin's death, states that the philosopher 
went into a field in which there was an unused building, 
and there, with only his son for companion, drew the 
lightning from the clouds. 

Horse racing was early a popular sport with the young 
bloods and farmers in the neighborhood of Philadelphia. 
Race Street received that name from the circumstance that 
it was the custom to race horses along that thoroughfare, 
and also from the fact that that street usually was the 
road selected to take the horses out to the Commons where 
the more formal races were held. The Jockey Club used 
to meet at the Center House, a tavern or inn that occupied 
a part of the site of Broad Street Station. In front of the 
inn was the track around which the horses were run. While 
there are no details remaining of the exact character of 
this race track, it may be said generally to have been a 
half-mile track, and it is scarcely possible that the horses 
were timed. 



234 A SYLVAN CITY. 

During the Revolutionary War Center Square, or The 
Commons, as the plot was always called by the Phila- 
delphians of the period, was the scene of many military 
activities. Local troops were drilled there. Silas Deane, 
writing to his wife in May, 1775, remarked: "I seriously 
believe Pennsylvania will in one month have more than 
20,000 disciplined troops ready to take the field. They 
exercise here twice every day, at 5 in the morning and at 
5 in the afternoon, and are extremely well armed. . . . 
The Commons west of the city is every morning and 
afternoon full of troops and spectators of all ranks." In 
September, 1781 two divisions of the French Army, on 
their way to the southern scene of operations, were en- 
camped on The Commons. There were about 6000 men 
in the French contingent, and it is probable that their 
encampment extended beyond the present limits of City 
Hall Square. 

Early Philadelphians were not very sanguinary. An 
occasional pirate was hanged on Windmill Island, which 
until 1894 lay in the Delaware River between Camden and 
Philadelphia, but after the Revolution, or possibly during 
it, such capital punishment as was meted out to con- 
demned persons was executed on The Commons. 

Some romantic criminals were sent to their deaths on 
The Commons. The site of the gallows was the middle of 
Broad Street, just south of City Hall. For those who like 
to be exact in details of this kind it might be mentioned 
that during the late World War the statues and rostrums 
erected in Broad Street south of City Hall, for the Liberty 



^ CITY HALL SQUARE. 



235 




236 A SYLVAN CITY. 

Bond activities, occupied almost exactly the spot where 
felons went to their doom in Philadelphia during the 
latter part of the eighteenth century. 

Public executions fortunately have long ago ceased to 
be tolerated, but in early days even Philadelphians did 
not appear to regard them as repulsive exhibitions, judging 
by the size of the crowds that attended them. One of the 
earliest official hangings oil The Commons on which there 
is a record was that of John Moody, who was put to 
death there on November 13, 1781, upon conviction of 
being a spy; it having been shown at his trial that he had 
intended to seize certain books and papers of the Congress. 
On September 24, 1788 Abraham and Levi Doan, who 
were members of the historic band of outlaws, known as 
the Doan Boys, commemorated in one of the novels of 
Dr. Robert M. Bird, although under a fictitious name, were 
hanged on The Commons, and the following year five 
"barrow men" were hanged there in one day. This mor- 
bidly spectacular event was held on September 18, 1789, 
and appears to have marked the last of the hangings that 
took place on this spot. As the term "barrow men" is 
all but incomprehensible to readers of the present day, 
it may be pertinent to explain they were convicts who 
were hired out to do paving and similar work on the city 
streets. The jail at that time was at the southeast corner 
of Sixth and Walnut Streets. The five "barrow men," it 
appears, while at work on Market Street near Thirteenth 
accidentally discovered a drover who had in his possession 
a large sum of money just received from a sale of live 



CITY HALL SQUARE. 237 

stock. The "barrow men," by aid of their accomphces, 
one of whom was a woman, managed to escape from the 
jail that night, and, \dsiting the place where the drover 
was stopping, attempted to gain his money. In the at- 
tempted robbery they killed another man, were quickly 
arrested, tried, and hanged. After this execution for 
many years future convicted murderers in this city paid 
the penalty in the North West Square, later known as 
Logan Square, and now the center of beauty of the Park- 
way, and renamed Logan Circle. 

About this time the city was rapidly building westward, 
and in 1790 became the Capital of the United States. 
In accordance with the progress of the city's improvements 
Broad and ]\Iarket Streets became the center of interest. 
In the years 1798 and 1799 it was realized by the leaders 
of thought in Philadelphia that the city had outgrown 
the stage when the water supply could depend upon the 
domestic pump, and, after several projects for bringing 
water to the city, a plan was adopted for pumping it from 
the Schuylkill River at a point between Market and 
Chestnut Streets, carrying it to Center Square and there 
distributing it through mains, after it had been raised to 
a small wooden tank by means of a steam engine. Phila- 
delphia's present consumption of more than 300,000,000 
gallons is in striking contrast to the supply then available. 
The mains used at that time, specimens of which may still 
be seen in the museum of the Franklin Institute, were of 
wood, being merely trimmed logs through which a hole 
had been bored. The system adopted had been designed 



238 A SYLVAN CITY. 



by Benjamin H. Latrobe, who was an engineer and an 
architect. Latrobe designed the picturesque building 
wliich was erected in Center Square, and called the 
Engine House, which occupied the center of the Com- 
mons. The beautiful structure, owing to its shape, was 
irreverently alluded to by Philadelphians as the "Pepper- 
box." 

At the time the scheme was being discussed the op- 
ponents of the plan laid great stress upon the inefficiency 
of the steam engine, which, as a matter of fact, was still 
of a rather primitive design in 1800. However, Nicholas 
I. Roosevelt, of New York, agreed to fm-nish a pumping 
engine guaranteed to raise the water to the stand pipe, 
and finally the plan of Latrobe and the engine of Roose- 
velt were adopted. Roosevelt was brother to the grand- 
father of President Theodore Roosevelt. 

By building the engine house at Broad and Market 
Streets the whole vicinity profited by improvements and 
new enterprises were attracted to the new center. The or- 
namental marble building was set in the center of the plot 
which now, for the first time, began to show some signs of 
cultivation. Walks bordered with ornamental Normandy 
poplars were laid out; the greatest sculptor of whom 
America then could boast, the wood carver William Rush, 
designed and carved a fine fountain, representing the Spirit 
of the Schuylkill, which w^as set up in front of the Engine 
House. Here, then, was to be found the first ornamental 
public fountain, and one of the first municipal water works 
erected in the United States. Philadelphians were quick 



CITY HALL SQUARE, 



239 



a 

c! 

o 



I— I 

O 

w 
o 

I— I 




240 A SYLVAN CITY. 

to appreciate the new joy which this Uttle park offered, 
and on Sunday afternoons and hoKdays Market Street 
was thronged with pleasure-seekers on their way to Center 
Square. During the War of 1812 Center Square was the 
scene of many celebrations of victories, and the ill-fated 
^ young painter, John Lewis Krimmel, has left us two char- 
acteristic merry-making scenes in the park around the old 
Water Works. 

On January 1, 1801 the Water Works were put into 
operation, and before twenty years had passed work was 
begun on a larger water supply at Fairmount. In 1822 the 
Fairmount works were put into operation, and the engine 
at Broad and Market Streets soon ceased to function. 
For a few years the Philosophical Society made use of an 
upper story in the Engine House, but in 1828 the building 
was removed in accordance with a plan for the general 
improvement of the site. Up to this time a wide roadway 
encircled the Center Square, and only two of the present 
four streets bordering the location were laid out. One of 
these was Juniper Street to the east, and the other was 
Filbert Street to the north. Now for the first time the 
Commons were planned in four squares, with Market and 
Broad Streets running between them. There also was 
laid out and paved Oak Street to the west of the squares, 
and on the south Olive Street. The former subsequently 
was named Merrick Street, in honor of Samuel Vaughan 
Merrick, who built a row of dwellings on the site of the 
old Lombardy Garden. After the Pennsylvania Rail- 
road built its station at Broad and Filbert Streets, in 1881, 



CITY HALL SQUARE. 



241 



td 
o 

o 

H 
W 
t> 
tr* 

W 
I— I 

o 
K 

n 

W 
o 
o 



CD W 



02 



t« 






00 

o 



ft) 

CO 
H 
O 

g 




242 A SYLVAN CITY. 

the name Merrick was changed to Broad, as the station 
was named from the first. 

On the site of Broad Street Station in the days before 
the Revolutionary War there was situated a road house, 
the home of the Jockey Club, which had its headquarters 
here in 1767. The inn was long known as the Center 
House, from it being located in the center of the old city, 
but early in the nineteenth century the grounds were 
laid out as an amusement place, and named the Lombardy 
Garden, evidently from the Lombardy poplars that had 
just been introduced in Center Square around the Water 
Works. Some of the popular singers at the Philadelphia 
theatres were heard there in summer concerts. The resort 
also was later known as Evans' Garden, from the name of 
its then proprietor, and seems to have been abandoned 
about 1836, when Mr. Merrick purchased the property 
and began the erection of his row of splendid dwellings, in 
which lived some prominent Philadelphians. 

As if catching up with the belated project of William 
Penn for Center Square, the city in 1814 established a 
market shed in Broad Street just south of the square. It 
was a convenience much in advance of a demand, and 
after a struggle for existence for about a dozen years the 
market was removed. 

Removal of the Engine House and the remodelling of 
Penn Squares, as the Center now was named, hastened the 
development of the neighborhood, which was started by 
the erection of Latrobe's temple-like building. The first 
important permanent improvement around this new cen- 



CITY HALL SQUARE. 



243 




244 A SYLVAN CITY. 



ter was the United States Mint. This structure, which 
was designed by WilUam Strickland, was begun in 1829 
and the building opened in 1833. It was the admiration 
of two generations of Philadelphians, was constructed of 
Pennsylvania marble, like so many of the public buildings 
put up in this city in the first half of the last century. 
The Mint building occupied the site of the present Widener 
Building, and, like that, had its front on Chestnut Street. 

The site of this Mint, the second one built in this city, 
must always be a historic one in Philadelphia, because 
from one of its second story window^s the first photograph 
taken in America was made on October 16, 1839 by Joseph 
Saxton, who was connected with the Mint. Saxton, an 
intelligent man who had a desire for knowledge, had had 
considerable scientific experience, and when he read a 
letter from Alexander Dallas Bache, in the United States 
Gazette, of the work of Daguerre in France, he had liis 
interest aroused in the astonishing and mysterious process 
of sun printing. This communication from Paris appeared 
in the issue of the newspaper for September 25, 1839. 
On October 16th, three weeks later, Saxton read a more 
detailed description of the process in the American Daily 
Advertiser, another Philadelphia newspaper. The same 
afternoon he began his experiments, which have become 
historic. 

Saxton improvised a camera, which he never had seen, 
from a cigar box. To this he fitted a sun glass, a little 
lens sometimes alluded to as a burning glass, as his 
objective. A strip of silver ribbon, such as the coin blanks 



td ^ 

W 00 



^5 



2 "^ 

O H 




245 



246 A SYLVAN CITY. 

were cut from in the Mint, was used for his plate. Setting 
the apparatus on the sill of one of the north windows on 
the second floor of the Mint Saxton made his exposure. 
The attempt was a success, and the result was a photo- 
graphic image, one and a quarter by two inches in size, of 
the upper stories of the Philadelphia High School and the 
State Arsenal, across Juniper Street, on the site of the 
Wanamaker Store. Saxton the next day made some 
other exposures from the second story windows of the 
Mint, and then, early in November, Robert Cornelius, a 
friend of the photographer, who had received some in- 
structions from him, made the first portrait by the 
Daguerre process ever made in the world. The latter 
experiment was conducted in the store of Cornelius. 
However, the portrait making was directly traceable to 
the effort of Saxton. 

Before Stephen Girard's will was published the public 
school system in operation in Philadelphia was rather ele- 
mental in character. The schools were generally regarded 
as only fitted for charity pupils, for "ragged" or pauper 
children. The munificent, carefully-thought out plan for 
a college for orphan boys left by Girard, who also be- 
queathed about $3,000,000 to carry out his ideas, gave the 
thoughtful a new view of popular education. One result 
of this was the establishment of a High School for Boys. 
The State had received a large sum as its share of a 
surplus from the Federal Government, and the Legislature 
generously appropriated $72,000 for a High School for 
Boys in Philadelphia. Professor Alexander Dallas Bache, 



CITY HALL SQUARE. 247 

who had been elected President of Girard College, was 
available to head the institution, since the college was not 
ready for occupancy. This was in 1837. The High School 
was erected on Juniper Street just north of the State 
Arsenal. It had an astronomical observatory presided 
over by Professor E, Otis Kendall, whose fame was spread 
throughout the scientific world, for it was in this observa- 
tory that the return of Encke's comet was predicted. At 
that time no college observatory in this country had such 
admirable scientific equipment. 

The State Arsenal, mentioned as being one of the build- 
ings shown in the first photograph taken in America, stood 
just south of the High School and about the middle of the 
block. Its entrance was on Thirteenth Street, but the 
wall on Juniper Street had a large gate in it, and material 
was taken in and removed from this end. The site had 
been occupied by an arsenal from 1785, although in 1813 
the original wooden structure gave way to a more sub- 
stantial building of brick. It was superseded about the 
time Saxton made his experiment by a newer building on 
Filbert Street, and was finally removed in 1854, when the 
Pennsylvania Railroad Company became possessors of the 
lot and built a freight station on the property. 

At the southeast corner of Juniper and Market Streets 
there had been a horse market and hotel from the latter 
part of the eighteenth century. At one time the sign of 
the Golden Horse hung outside the small hotel, and the 
stables were in a yard that opened east of the hotel on 
Market Street. Close beside the hotel stood a small 



248 



A SYLVAN CITY. 



candy store in the fifties, and its proprietor became 
notorious from being the chief actor in a sensational 
murder case. This was Arthur Spring, who coolly mur- 
dered and robbed two women, and was hanged for his 
crimes in Moyamensing Prison in 1853. It was in this 
year that the Pennsylvania Railroad Company purchased 
all of the properties bounded by Thirteenth and Juniper 



P4&^* 




. ^'*-- 'v-^.^ -y^,^.,.,. <t.Ww . ' -r= 




hft.H.W, 



OLD HORSE MARKET INN, SOUTHEAST CORNER JUNIPER AND 
MARKET STREETS. 

Streets on the south side of Market Street. The lot ex- 
tended to a narrow thoroughfare about 100 feet north of 
Chestnut Street. On this site the company built a large 
freight station, but by the year 1874, owing to the erection 
of the City Hall, which would close Market Street to its 
railway tracks, the business of the station had to be re- 
moved to another section of the city. The old freight 
depot in the fall of the year 1874 was the scene of the 



CITY HALL SQUARE. 249 

semi-centennial of the Franklin Institute, which gave one 
of the largest and most valuable industrial and scientific 
exhibitions that ever had been given in this country. In 
the six weeks the exposition was open 296,000 admission 
tickets were sold. 

Not long after the Institute Fair was closed the old 
freight depot was purchased by John Wanamaker. It was 
not known immediately that the great Philadelphia mer- 
chant had bought the property, and the news came as a 
sensation when, later, it leaked out prematurely through 
the action of a committee which had invited Moody and 
Sankey, the evangelists, to come to Philadelphia and give 
a season of revival services. The committee believed the 
old freight depot could easily be altered for the purposes of 
the meetings, and paid a visit to Thomas A. Scott, then 
president of the Railroad Company, to learn upon what 
terms they could have possession for the revival. It was 
then they learned that Mr. Wanamaker had bought the 
property and the committee would consequently have to 
communicate with the new owner. It happened that at 
the time Mr. Wanamaker was in Europe, but the com- 
mittee cabled him, and received in reply a message that[the 
use of the building for three months by Moody and 
Sankey could be had for a rental of one dollar. The lease 
therefore was immediately signed. 

From November 21, 1875 to January 28, 1876 the great 
evangelists held daily services in the old freight depot, 
attracting thousands at each of the 210 sessions. Prob- 
ably no such enthusiastic religious meetings ever had been 



250 



A SYLVAN CITY. 



held in this country up to that time as these in the old 
freight depot. There were occasions when as many as 
13,000 persons were present, and the total attendance for 
the series of meetings was estimated at more than 1,050,000. 
On the last night of the revival the new owner of the 
property had a host of carpenters and house wreckers 
waiting to go to work the moment the services were at an 
end and start the operation of transforming the dilapidated 
freight depot into a great store. The last echo of the last 












OLD CAB STAND AT BROAD AND MARKET STREETS, 1871. 

hymn had scarcely died away on the departing assemblage 
before the workmen were tearing out the old preparatory 
to constructing the new. 

On May 6, 1876, four days before the Centennial 
Exposition was formally opened in Fairmount Park, 
Wanamaker's Grand Depot, as the new store was named, 
was opened for business, while many local prophets 
smilingly predicted failure of the gigantic enterprise. It 
was the largest retail store in the city, and many con- 
servatives honestly believed it was too big and too far 



CITY HALL SQUARE. 



251 



westward to succeed in the retail trade then centered 
around Eighth Street. That the prophets were bad ones 
the present mammoth granite building known as Wana^ 
maker's throughout the country is the best evidence. A 
year after the opening Philadelphians received another 




OLD FEEIGHT STATION, PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD, MARKET 
STREET FROM 13tH TO JUNIPER. FROM A PHOTO- 
GRAPH MADE IN 1875. IN THE BACKGROUND 
IS SHOWTSr CITY HALL IN COURSE OF CON- 
STRUCTION. 

shock, for the Grand Depot began the sale of dry goods, 
and not long afterward the store was extended and the 
first American Department Store was well along on its 
career. 

The idea of a great Department Store, evidently shaped 
somewhat upon the lines of the Bon Marche, which 



252 



A SYLVAN CITY. 



Aristide Boucicaut founded so successfully in the Rue de 
Sevres, in Paris, very quickly outgrew the original in de- 
sign and in the scope of its development, and itself became 
a model and a pattern upon which the American Depart- 
ment Store wherever found is a reflection and an interpre- 
tation. It has been a fountain of enterprise and original 
conceptions of the art of modern retail merchandising 




GRAND DEPOT IN 1876. SITE OF THE PRESENT WANAMAKER 

STORE. 



methods. The first store to be electrically illuminated 
was the Grand Depot, which was lighted with arc lights 
supplied from the store's own plant in 1878. The proj- 
ect was so radical that it is said one local business man 
vainly waited several hours in the store for the materializa- 
tion of his prediction of failure. The Grand Depot also 
introduced the modern type of store window decoration, 



CITY HALL SQUARE. 253 



until now there is what might be called a profession of 
store window decorators. The old way was to fill a 
shop window with more goods than could be easily 
digested and plaster them with price tickets. The newer 
way was to revolutionize all this, until the show windows 
of Wanamaker's are in themselves a constant source of 
pleasure for the eye, and frequently educational. 

This newer kind of store, as would be expected, went 
forward continually. At first the expansion took the 
course of additional stories; then, by degrees, the whole 
Chestnut Street front was added and the great store had 
a city block for its own. In 1909 it was decided to remove 
all this and replace it with the monster granite structure 
that has become a landmark on the city's sky-line. In 
two years the new building was completed and President 
Taft came up from the Executive Mansion at Washington 
especially to take part in formal ceremonies of dedicating 
this great mart of commerce. 

The immense structure which was erected without 
stopping the business a single day is itself a monument of 
enterprise and skill that has set a standard. In the great 
store is the largest organ in the country, which is daily 
heard by thousands that throng the establishment. In 
fact, the entertainments and conveniences offered the 
Philadelphia public by the place has caused it to be re- 
garded more as an institution than a store. 

From the days in the mid-eighteenth century, when 
horse racing was an attraction around the Commons, 
City Hall Square has been the center of amusement for the 



254 



A SYLVAN CITY. 



people of the city. After the Square had been laid out with 
walks, trees, and shrubbery around the old Water Works 
located there, two summer gardens sprang up in the 
vicinity. On the site of Broad Street Station, as has been 
mentioned on another page, stood the Lombardy Garden, 
a pleasure park, where music, and what we now would 
call vaudeville, but of a different character, were the 




GRAND DEPOT ABOUT 1880. VIEW FROM SOUTH PENN 

SQUARE. AT THE RIGHT IS SHOWN THE SECOND 

UNITED STATES MINT. 



attractions. On the north side of Market Street between 
Juniper and Thirteenth Streets stood a garden known at 
different times as the Tivoli and as the Columbia. With 
the disappearance of the Water Works and the rearrange- 
ment of Center Square into four grass plots, with a few 
trees, and the further development of the neighborhood, 
these places of amusement passed away. In a building 



CITY HALL SQUARE. 255 

which stood on the north side of Market street, from 
Fifteenth to Merrick Streets, Rothermel painted his large 
historic picture of the Battle of Gettysburg. 

In 1837 a movement was begun to erect a new City Hall, 
the ancient To^vn Hall at Second and Market Streets being 
well along in the discarding process, and the projectors 
believing the proper site for the new structure would be 
at Broad and Market Streets. The movement, like other 
progressive measures, was allowed to die calmly and peace- 
fully. It was regarded as too ambitious and the site was 
even then looked upon as too far westward. But at dif- 
ferent times the project showed signs of returning to life, 
and just at the outbreak of the Civil War was beginning 
to accumulate some force. At the close of that struggle 
the plan was revived and pushed through the devious 
paths obstructionists had set up in the courts and in the 
elections, until finally a Commission was created by the 
Legislature, given power to levy taxes for the purpose of 
the new building, and the City Hall was erected. 

Work was begun on the structure in 1872, and the build- 
ing was virtually completed in 1901, when the Commission 
was abolished. The city authorities put on the finishing 
touches that were left when the Commission turned 
over the building, and, after thirty years of labor and the 
expenditure of more than $26,000,000, Philadelphia had a 
City Hall. At that time it was found to have outgrown 
the city's business, and in 1922 work was begun upon an 
Annex to the City Hall at Broad and Race Streets. 

City Hall Square on the northwest side is the Eastern 



256 A SYLVAN CITY. 

terminus of the Parkway, justly regarded as the greatest 
civic improvement ever undertaken in the United States. 
Work was begun on this beautiful avenue, which links 
Fairmount Park with the city's center, in 1907, and in 1918 
the thoroughfare was opened for its entire length of a mile 
and a quarter. It had cost up to 1920 about $22,000,000, 
but in a few years it will be an embellishment whose value 
will far exceed the initial outlay. 

City Hall Square being acknowledged the center of the 
city's life and business is, in consequence, the center of its 
enormous wealth. The real estate within a square mile 
with City Hall as its center contains more than one-third 
of the total assessed valuation of the city's 129 square 
miles. What this means may be imagined when it is 
stated that the total assessments, not including many 
millions of exempted property, are two billions of dollars. 



PUBLIC SCHOOLS; 



The seed-leaves of our school system may be said to 
have sprouted in 1683, when, in fulfillment of a provi- 
sion of the " Great Law," enacted by authority of Wil- 
liam Penn, it was declared that " schools shall be estab- 
lished for the tuition of the young." The first in our 
city was started by Enoch Flowers, and a small sum 
was charged for each pupil. In 1698 the Quakers opened 
another, for "all the children and servants, male and 
female" — the rich at reasonable rates, the poor for 
nothing. Later, a company of German philanthropists, 
sustained by contributions from religious societies in 
Europe, began to open free schools in Pennsylvania. In 
1756 these were well established. In 1790 a provision 
of the Constitution secured the founding of schools 
throughout the State, in which the poor could be taught 
gratis. During all this period, however, the benevo- 
lent but mistaken distinction made between rich and 
poor seemed to turn the public sentiment against them ; 
they were called "pauper schools," and were despised 
by the one class and shunned by the other. In 1827 a 
society was formed in Philadelphia for the Promotion 
of Education in the State, a committee opened corres- 
pondence with leading educators in other countries, and 

* See Introduction. 
257 



258 A STL VAN CITY. 

their efforts finally culminated, in 1834, in the enact- 
ment of a law which secured free education to all. 

This, then, was the beginning for us, not of the 
Public, but of the Common School. Still, the plant 
was so weakly, and adverse winds so strong, that its 
continued life was by no means certain. The very next 
year a powerful effort was made to uproot it ; and then 
sturdy Thaddeus Stevens strode to its rescue, and with 
the aid of the then Governor Wolf, who engaged if 
necessary to use his veto power in its behalf, the storm 
was weathered, and the free school for all became, so 
to speak, indigenous. 

A system of education not yet fifty years old is still 
scarce beyond its plumules : in view of this we have a 
right to consider it a remarkably fine specimen. In any 
other case we should hesitate, as yet, to place it on ex- 
hibition, except to urge its need of better facilities for 
growth, which is the purpose of this article. 

Education, in a free country, is not a privilege, but a 
right, and every citizen has a right to the best. If he 
suspect that he is being served with a low-grade article 
it is his business to investigate. If it come to the know- 
ledge of a Philadelphian that the boards of education in 
other districts employ a paid superintendent, he ought 
to ask why his own city has no such officer. If he hear 
that certain methods, unknown to his own youth, teach 
children to read without tears, he should say to the 
board: "Examine into those methods, and if good, 
import them." If a rumor reach him that the authori- 




LUNCH HOUR AT PHILADELPHIA HIGH SCHOOL. 



PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 261 

ties of Brussels, by faithful care of the school children, 
have notably improved the health statistics of that 
city, he should say : " Take heed to the health of my 
children; that is one of your first duties." In short, 
he should first learn to realize the need of, and then to 
demand the following essentials to education, in almost 
every item of which Philadelphia is now behind the 
leading cities of the Union : Organized management ; 
industrial education ; more school houses ; better school 
houses ; better teaching ; better school directors. 

I. Organized management of the schools hy professional 
paid superintendents. On this point we quote from the 
urgent appeal of the President of the Board of Educa- 
tion. "The absence of superintendence in our schools 
is an anomaly ; there is no knowledge possessed, by any 
central power, of the character, condition and needs of 
the schools of this district ; nowhere else is it attempted 
to conduct a school district of half the proportions of 
this without the constant supervision of trained spe- 
cialists in education. . . . When there were but few 
schools — and that is far in the past — they could under- 
stand each other's wants and plans, and conform to 
them ; but this is now impossible." 

Thirty-one boards of direction, with thirty-one theo- 
ries of managing their business affairs and instructing 
their employes ! Imagine the Pennsylvania Railroad 
conducting its operations on this principle. And yet the 
public schools are of more value than many railroads. 

II. Industrial education. This is a demand so fresh 



262 A SYLVAN CITY. 

that we have scarcely begun to reaUze its deep signih- 
cance ; we feel that something is wrong ; we know^ that 
man cannot live b}'- text-book education alone, and we 
see not where he is to learn the art or trade by which he 
must earn his bread. Time was when the lad who had 
mastered his three R's could go right into the shop, and 
into the family, of the master mechanic whose trade he 
chose, and rise step by step to a knowledge of his busi- 
ness. 

Kow all this is changed. Our trades-unions dictate 
the number of apprentices to be allowed in any one es- 
tablishment, and the rest are helpless. And as the 
times .change we must change, or suffer disaster. The 
two-inch pot which successfully developed the acorn 
will soon begin to cramp the growing oak. The 
time seems to have come for this country when men 
and women must be prepared for their life-work by 
the public schools or not at all. In this day the youth 
of average abilities, turned out to earn his living with 
only the old-fashioned school equipment, has not been 
treated justly. He has received his little quota of text- 
book facts and rules, which he will soon forget, because 
lie has never been taught to associate them with practi- 
cal, every-day doings. He knows that 300 degrees make 
a great circle ; but what a degree is for, and what earth 
or heaven wants of a great circle, or how many feet 
high is a given fence or house, he has never been taught 
to consider. He knows that " a prime number is one 
which has no integral factors," but it doesn't seem to 




THE girls' normal SCHOOL. 



PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 



365 



help him a bit in making change at the counter. He has 
no notion of tlie properties of common things ; he has 
had no practice in contrivance ; he cannot use his own 
body to best advantage ; he cannot handle tools ; he not 
only has no handicraft, but knows not how to pick up 
one ; and his lack of the mental alertness which a proper 
training of his senses and perceptions could have given, 




DRAWING IN THE GIRLS' NORMAL SCHOOL 



266 A SYLVAN CITY. 

will make him a failure, if he hire himself out as errand- 
boy. 

Nevertheless, he marries a girl who can neither sew, 
nor cook, nor wash, nor set a table well enough to make 
her living should the necessity arise. How should she ? 
Where are these things systematically taught ? At 
home she provides wastefully ; she has never been told 
what kinds of food are cheap and what dear at a given 
price. She breaks down the health of herself and her 
family by violating every known law of hygiene, because 
to her they are unknown ; sickness disheartens them ; 
failures undermine their ambition. Then they sit down 
and wail for help from public funds or private charity, 
and soon they get used to being helped, and self-respect 
is lost, and the community pays their board until they 
die. Who is to blame ? The State is to blame, when it 
opens its school-room doors and sets loose its youth upon 
the world as Alva used to set loose his prisoners of war, 
first taking off their arms at the shoulders, and then 
allowing them to live If they could. 

No man has a right to say " the world owes me a liv- 
ing," but every child may say " the world owes me the 
knowledge of a craft by which I may earn my hving." 
The sort of education which the State owes to each of its 
members would not only train that average mind to its 
highest general capacity, but would find out >the sort of 
practical faculty most pronounced j|i each pupil, and 
train that to the best advantage. It would teach the 
use of all ordinary tools ; it would teach the principles 



PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 



267 



of mechanics, and drawing as applied to meclianics ; 
and, by degrees, it would establish actual trades. It 
would divert, if need be, fully one-half the pupil's time 
from school-room to work-room ; and then we should 
discover that three hours a day rightly spent in mental 
effort gives about all the mental result of which a pupil 




%^. --4^" 







UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA — OKIOINAL BUILDING. 



is capable, and that a change to the exercise of another 
set of faculties is so much clear gain. And seeing that 
a large proportion of the girls of our public schools are 
obliged to earn their own bread, it should by no means 
exclude them from the advantage of the work-rooms. 
There are many occupations now followed by women, 
of which the rudiments at least can be taught in the 



268 A SYLVAJSr CITY. 

school. Moreover, in woman's universally-approved 
vocation of providing for the wants of man, why 
should not cooking be made, at one stroke, respectable, 
by associating it with chemistry, and constituting it a 
science ? 

Not all the moral paragraphs ever composed on the 
Pignity of Labor will do so much to make labor 
honored as the one fact that it has a place in our 
general system of education, and must be studied by 
intellectual methods. Cooking is more important even 
than sewing. Why should it not be taught in every 
public school ? 

The idea of industrial education can no longer be 
smiled down as visionary. London spends $500,000 on 
it annuall}', and there is scarcely a town or city in 
Europe that has not its industrial school. The St. 
Petersburg Institute of Technology displayed at our 
Centennial Exposition a set of models, showing every 
stage of manipulation in iron and wood, from the crude 
material to the manufactured article. Philadelphians 
noticed these, and thought them very prett}- ; Bostoni- 
ans noticed, pondered, went home and erected buildings, 
and now teach, beside the higher principles, in their 
School of Technology " the elementary branches of most 
of the trades, as moulding, turning, weaving, carpenter- 
ing, smithery and the rest. The students divide their 
time between these and their books." Is there any- 
thing in Philadelphia's climate to prevent her doing the 
same ? 




FIREPLACE IN THE MUSEUM — OLD GERMANTOWN ACADEMY. 



PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 271 

III. More school houses. It is rather startling to 
those who believe that free institutions depend for their 
life upon free education to find that " while the city's 
population increases at the rate of about 25,000 annu- 
ally, the appropriation for school buildings was last 
increased at the rate of accommodation for 448. ' ' But 
all this is to be changed, as Councils have given at one 
sweep $300,000 for the erection of new and the repair of 
old buildings. This is inspiring, and the only suggestion 
we presume to make is that there may be, in every 
class-room of every new building, efficient provision for 
the escape of foul and the entrance of fresh air. This 
is, of all architectural problems, perhaps the most diffi- 
cult ; but its importance is so great that if good venti- 
lation is to be found anywhere in the world it should be 
found here. We had better starve a child's brain than 
taint its blood. That there is need of such a sugges- 
tion is shown by the testimony of one lady whose daugh- 
ter attended a handsome new school in the upper part 
of the city : 

"She had been a healthy child before going there, but 
she soon began to have headaches, which grew so frequent 
that I went to the school to see if the cause might be there. 
I found that the ventilators amounted, as usual, to nothing, 
and that the times when a window was lowered were rare 
exceptions. ' You see, ' explained the teacher, ' if the win- 
dow is open we have to use more heat, and then the prin- 
cipal up stairs sends down to us to shut it, as we are 
cooling his rooms.' And in this school, for reasons best 
known to teachers or directors, the requirements regard- 
ing exercise were ignored. There was no recess whatever, 



273 A SYLVAN CITY. 

even when, as in bad weather, the session was four hours 
long. And the girls sat in that poison through those truly 
mortal hours with scarce a change of position, not even, 
as pleaded for, five minutes to march round the room and 
sit down again. ' ' 

This careful mother, failing in her appeal for humane 
treatment in the school-room, wisely withdrew her child, 
to lose her education if so she must, but at least to save 
her health. 

V. Better teaching. There are in our schools many 
teachers whose intelligent devotion to their work cannot 
be repaid by either money or praise ; women who not 
only appreciate the improvements introduced by the 
Board of Education, but carry them out in spite of 
great disadvantages. There are schools, for instance, 
where the lessons of the morning are habitually ex- 
plained the preceding afternoon. There is at least one 
school whose lowest division, as most needing intelli- 
gence and experience, is taken in charge by the high- 
est teacher. We all know women whose best life and 
thought and whose best years of life are put into the 
school-room. 

For the other sort, only one who has been a teacher 
can justly criticise their shortcomings ; only she knows, 
for instance, how difficult it is to give individual atten- 
tion to so large a number ; only she knows how much of 
the time which should be employed in actual teaching is* 
wasted in the mere effort to keep order. With fifteen or 
twenty children in one room, and a teacher who knows 
how to keep her pupils at work, almost the whole time 



PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 



273 



might be given to teaching ; with twice or thrice that 
number, to insure the quiet essential to class work a 
discipline must be maintained so unnatural, so irksome 
to a healthy child, so almost brutal in its exactions, as 
to irritate and demoralize the pupils, to weary and un- 
nerve the teacher, and to abstract an immense propor- 




UNION SCHOOL AT KINGSESSING, 1778. 



tion of time from the true object of the school. When 
Mr. Parker, Superintendent of the Boston Schools, was 
urging upon our teachers more individual interest in 
their pupils, one of them asked : "What would you do 
in my place with a division of seventy ?" To which he 
could only reply, " I should pray for Philadelphia." 
Still the fact remains that we employ many teachers 



274 A SYLVAN CITY. 

who ought not to be trusted with the care of any 
mother's children. It is sometimes supposed, by direc- 
tors and others, that the object of the public schools 
is to create genteel positions for interesting young 
women, but this is far from th*^ +ruth. The schools are 
meant for the children, and for them only ; and if any 
department suffers from incompetent teachers it should 
be re-officered, even to the point, if our supply of "na- 
tive talent" fall short, of seeking for help in places 
where teaching has longer been taught. 

Moreover, the present method of examinations, which 
demands so much memorizing, is unfavorable to the 
broader sort of instruction. If education meant simply 
the fixing of certain facts and definitions in the youth- 
ful mind, it would not be so much amiss ; but if, as 
many begin to suspect, it should mean instead the real 
awakening of that mind and the strengthening of its 
own capacities for acquirement ; if it is the larger part 
of our business to make the pupil want to leayi, and 
know how to learn ; then what a different system must 
we employ, then what a world of explanations, of de- 
vices to make the unaccustomed subject clear to the 
tender brain, of pictures, of anecdotes, of experiments, 
of free question and expression of views from the pu- 
pil ; then his text-book definition would be simply the 
starting point for the real lesson, and for the class-room 
work that would grow out of it. Then every such point 
would take more time — much more time — but once 
learned, it would not be an isolated formula, inserted in 








PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL ACADEMY, 1790. 



PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 277 

the brain as by some mischance a bullet or needle in the 
body, but it would be as the food we digest, a part of 
the blood and a source of strength to the frame. 
By the first method the programme is naturally — 
" Class, attention ! The-next-^ cography-lesson-is-from 
-what-does -the - Eastern - Continent - comprise - to- what- 
is-a-promontory-page- 13-anybody-that- misses-two -will- 
be-kept-in-till-he-knows-it. Kise ! Pass !" 

By the other method the teacher would have her 
blackboard ready hefcn-e the memorizing of the lesson, for 
the children to draw a promontor}-, a bay, &c. She 
would provide a vessel of water, and set therein a pretty, 
tinted papier mache island, all indented with sloping 
shores and dotted with trees and marked with pictured 
streams. She would have her waiter of soft clay, out of 
which they could shape a continent, and make hollows 
for lakes, and pinch up the mountains to their relative 
heights ; and when they had with their own little fingers 
created the Isthmus of Darien, there would be small 
risk of being " kept in " for the text-book definition. Or 
if it were a lesson in weights and measures, she would 
turn that purgatory into a land of comparative pleasance 
by letting them stand behind a counter, and illustrate 
with real scales, and something real to weigh, the dif- 
ference between Troy and Avoirdupois. In the graded 
course of instruction, nominally now in effect, are con- 
stantly recurring such provisions as the following : "Ex- 
planation of meaning and use of words, correction of 
common errors of speech, location of prominent places 



278 A SYLVAN CITY. * 

in the city, familiar talks about the city, object lessons, 
familiar talks about the senses, talks about conduct and 
personal habits, systematic physical exercise at end of 
every hour." 

Are these points, all-essential, observed by the teach- 
ers ? How many directors insist upon their observance ? 
How many parents go to see for themselves ? One of 
the few reports to this effect : " Connected with our 
Normal School is a School of Practice, in which all 
the newer and better methods of the day are supposed 
to be taught ; but these newer ways very seldom get 
into the class-room ; the young teacher goes from her 
practice to her school, and settles down to the dreary 
grind of memorizing which was discarded in New Eng- 
land thirty years ago." The grand principle seems 
to be that one process of driving individual nails into 
that one faculty — the memory ; the best teacher is she 
who can drive the largest number (to hold) in a given 
time ; the best examiner is he whose claw-hammer ques- 
tions elicit the largest number of these with the fewest 
confusing appeals to the general understanding. 

And supposing that we had two thousand teachers, 
all able and willing to teach in the other fashion, they 
have positively not the time to do it. One excellent 
teacher said to a visitor : "I am constantly tempted, 
in my class-room, to deviate from the text-book and talk 
ohoui the lesson, but I have to resist this, or I should 
fall behind at examination." Another confessed : "It 
did mortify me, at the last examination, to find that in 




FIVE MINUTES LATE. 



PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 281 

answer to a question in etymology, every one in the 
class gave the same sentence as an illustration." 

Yet it is plain that there must be some accepted test 
for promotions, and that the form of this is a truly diffi- 
cult problem. It can only be claimed in this regard, 
that the aim of examiners should be to discover the 
general development of the child's intellect at the seve- 
ral stages of his education, rather than, or at least in 
large addition to, the number of unassociated facts, 
dates and rules which he has succeeded in memorizing. 
Nor would we underestimate the value of drill, pure 
and simple. Any method of instruction which explains 
so much that the pupil has nothing to do is a vicious 
method ; and any which habituates him to depend for 
his incentive to application wholly on the attractiveness 
of his subject is vicious. He should be so taught that 
he wants to learn (that is one half), and that he knows 
how to learn (that is the other). And to this end a 
carefully-measured proportion of his mental discipline 
should consist of absolute, patient drudgery, and a 
small proportion of the closest mental concentration. 
He should have his thinking powers so at his own com- 
mand that he can at any stated time set himself to a 
task and make himself do it. 

The trouble with Alice in Wonderland, when she tried 
to play croquet with the queen, was that nothing was 
sure to stay where it was put. When she had her hedge- 
hog neatly rolled up, and was on the point of making a 
good stroke, it was as likely as not to unroll itself and 



282 A SYLVAN CITY. 

amble away ; or, if she did send it right for the arch, the 
arch might be there, or it might have straightened up 
and sidled off to chat with its neighbor. And so with 
untrained mental powers. Sometimes they are there and 
sometimes not ; sometimes their owners are capable of 
intense and prolonged application, but only when they 
are seized from without by an idea or a motive which 
possesses and drives them ; but in the other case they 
habitually possess and have power to use themselves. 
We must admit that even the memory needs careful cul- 
tivation, but we feel that this faculty, while it may be in 
danger of over-strain, is in no danger of neglect for a 
long time to come. 

YI. Better direction. In our school-boards there are 
many men, and lately some women, of known ability 
and culture, who devote themselves most earnestly to 
the work for which they have become responsible ; but, 
in association with these, and frustrating their efforts at 
every turn, are men of — let us say of another variety. 
'^In certain states of this Union and elsewhere," says 
the President of the Board of Education, " the depart- 
ment of education is, by common consent, exempt from 
the use of party leaders and followers, and the interests 
of the schools are consequently safe. " If this has become 
possible in other and in some cases younger states, might 
it not be possible in ours ? With a proper system of 
choosing school directors, such instances as the following 
would bo imxjossible : 







THIRTY-EIGHTH ST. AND DARBY ROAD, WEST PHILADELPHIA. 



PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 285 

No. 1. Earlymorning. Milkman {interrupted in Ids chat 
with Bridget hy the lady of the house) — "Morning, mum. 
Is it that ye 're goin' to fault the milk, mum?" 

Lady. — " Not at all. I came out to ask your influence 
as school director. I am applying for a situation in your 
ward." 

No. 2. Teacher (in class-room). — "Not pyanner, Miss 
Smith ; it is pronounced piano." 

Pupil. — " iVb, ma'am ; my pop says pyanner every time, 
and he 's a director." 

No. 3. A Teacher, obliged to consult her director in 
sudden emergency, finds inscribed above his portal the 
following quaint sayings : 

' ' Lively Boys' Retreat. " " Free Lunch this Day. ' ' 
"Pool Played for Drinks." 

On the special fitness of saloon-keepers as guides 
and examples for youth, public opinion speaks clearly 
at every election in the surprising number whom it 
elevates to positions of immense importance in child- 
ish eyes. In regard to the large proportion, not only 
of mechanics who might have the needful education, 
but of common day-laborers — this is a free country, in 
which it is our boast that true merit can rise, irrespec- 
tive of condition, but must it be so utterly irrespective 
of fitness ? Your hod-carrier may be virtuous, though 
illiterate ; he may not use his power to get situations 
for all the females of his tribe who, spite of general un- 
culture, can pass a routine examination ; he may resist 
his opportunities to provide at the same time the coal' 
for his school and his family ; as a laborer and as a 



286 A SYLVAN CITY. 

citizen he may be an admirable person ; but as a guide 
for teachers, a chooser of text-books, a manager of school 
expenditures, an authority on school methods, an arbi- 
ter of the destinies of education, he is a disgrace. 

To repeat, then, we need to bring our schools to a 
level with those of our sister cities in these matters. 
Paid superintendence — that would be an economy in 
every sense : more school-houses — these we are to have : 
industrial training — that has become a necessity : better 
teaching — men and women of education and public 
spirit as school directors. And for these we need, per- 
haps not more, possibly only a better, use of money. 
How is the money used, by the way ? In what direc- 
tions have we been heretofore extravagant ? Kot yet 
in school-houses, for we remember that there are still 
many thousands of children without a chance to learn 
to read ; not in repairs, for, bad as are the forty-five 
rented buildings, we are told that less than the usual 
amount of repairing was done, owing to the lessened 
appropriation of Councils for the purpose ; not in the 
upper departments, for the chairman of the High School 
Committee plaintively remarks : "The reduced appro- 
priations have cut down the facilities of the school 
and the pay of the professors, until serious danger is 
threatened to the institution." And the President 
of the High School reports: "The appropriation for* 
apparatus, etc , was unfortunately reduced to a very 
small and insufficient amount." iNot in obeying the 
Scripture injunction m regard to good instruction— 



_ jMa^ 33 







r 






iWi^Blf' ^^^/ 




PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 289 

"Let. her not go, for she is thy Mfe" — for we find that 
"in September, 1880, Prof. EUhu Thompson, attracted 
by better pay and the prospect of promotion, resigned 
the chair of chemistry in wliich lie had so successfully 
labored four years." And the record of another valued 
laborer, Prof. Wilson, reads: "The over-conscientious 
discharge of arduous duties, combined with the anxiety 
caused by the loss of nearly half his salary, had under- 
mined his constitution, and when he relinquished his 
work and applied for medical advice he was already a 
dying man." And it cannot be in the night schools, 
although we might forgive a little lavishness in re- 
sponse to the plea of men and women whose daylight 
hours are spent in toil, and who long so for improvement 
that they are willing to go right from a hard day's work 
to the school-room every night to get it. 

Xo, there was no wild extravagance here. The Board 
of Education decides that in this kind of schooling "a 
continuous term of four months is necessary to produce 
a substantial result." The special committee declares 
that this calls for $25,000 ; the City Fathers make an 
appropriation of $7500 ; and the night schools, conse- 
quently, close in just four weeks. That some of 
the pupils at least want more, is shown by the fact 
that a series of evening classes for working women, 
started last fall as an experiment by some Philadel- 
phia ladies, kept in session from October 15 to the 
end of April, giving instruction to over four hundred, 
who appeal most earnestly for resumption next year. 



290 A SYLVAlSr CITY. 

But there is still another way in which our city author- 
ities may have been a little reckless. They may have 
read the reports of improvements in teaching in Bos- 
ton, Kew York, St. Louis, San Francisco and elsewhere, 
and become annoyed at seeing one ship of education 
after another furl its old canvas, put in all sorts of 
modern appliances, and steam away from our old-fash- 
ioned sailing vessel, leaving her almost out of sight. 
They may have become convinced that the best teaching 
can be done only by the best teachers, and that superior 
ability in this art, as in all others, goes where money 
calls it. We have perhaps been spending more than 
we could afford on salaries ? 

Well, no ; unless there has been a change in the last 
two years. In the report preceding the last, the president 
gives the following comparative estimate of salaries : 

New York, average salary of teacher, . . . $814 17 
Boston, u u "... 978 35 

Philadelphia, " " " . . . 486 14 

It really does seem, in view of the results, that we 
either do not devote to school purposes a sufficient pro- 
portion of the money handed in by our citizens, or that it 
is poorly administered. A wise mother, in considering 
the claims of the household, apportions the largest 
means to the profoundest need. If there is not enough 
we ought to have more, if even we get along with fewer 
civic dinners and fewer patriotic occasions, and perhaps 
rather fewer stone dolls on our very stupendous public 
buildings. 




OLD GERMAN SCHOOL ON CHERRY STREET. 



PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 293 

But if the fault is in unsystematic expenditure, a 
leaf from the story of Mr. C. F. Adams of the expe- 
rience of the Quincy schools may have its suggestions 
for us : 

"As affairs stood it was plain that a great waste of pub- 
lic money was going on ; the statistics did not show that 
the town was spending an undue amount on its ^ schools, 
but of the amount it was spending not fifty cents of each 
dollar were effectively spent. . . This waste could only 
be remedied in one way. . . It was determined to ask the 
town to employ a superintendent of schools, and to put 
the working out of the system in his hands." 

The success of this new departure is already widely 
known. Without increasing their school-tax, simply by 
organized management, just such management as any 
business corporation must use or die, they have so im- 
proved the character of the schools and of the instruc- 
tion that friends of education go there from far and near 
to find out how. How can Philadelphia do it ? First, 
find a man who has studied education as a science ; paj' 
him a salary consistent with his value, and give him 
such paid assistants, the best he can find of either sex, as 
his work demands, thus giving the force of one concerted 
movement to the thirt} -one little independent forces now 
each pulling its own way. Next, organize in like man- 
ner the action' of all the divisions in one school, by 
giving to the principal at least a part of his or her time 
from actual teaching for general supervision. Last, but 
not least, insure in each school committee an intelligent 
co-operation with the general plan, by removing the 



294 



A SYLVAN CITY. 



choice of directors from the pot-house to some higher 
source — by instituting some test, almost an}^ test, of fit- 
ness ; then ability to read, if nothing more ; and let us 
stipulate furthermore that no school director shall run 
a "saloon." 







A PRIMARY SCHOLAR. 



A MASTER BUILDER 



After the first astonished liour in ^N'antucket, the 
stranger wlio seeks a reason for things as they are, and 
who, if a true American, sees also how thej- should have 
been and plans instinctively for what they had better 
be, pauses, considers the facts, and insensibly becomes 
convinced that, amazing as certain aspects may be, the 
arrangement is reasonable ; in fact, the only one admit- 
ting comfortable life. The stranger is intent upon 
meeting the ocean face to face. The townsman has 
other views. To him the sea is good only so far as 
it serves as a storehouse for food or a highway be- 
tween him and prosperity. If this be so for the men, 
a deeper reason intluences their women. Too many 
brave ships have gone down, too many high souls looked 
their last toward home across fierce waves piling up 
and sweeping them into a harbor not laid down on any 
chart, for those who waited at home to plan for any 
constant outlook upon it. 

And so the houses elbow one another, and ' ' the street 
called Straight" is not to be found within her borders, 
lanes and alleys, twisting and winding and ending sud- 
denly against blank walls, in a vain endeavor to escape 

the wind, which "bloweth where it listeth," and with 

295 



396 A SYLVAN CITY. 

which every blade of vegetation on the island wages a 
constant struggle. Even the harbor has its dangers, 
a bar lies across the entrance, and only skillful piloting 
secures safe entry. One marvels at the courage of the 
first settlers, who sought it in despair, and who planted 
there the toleration they had failed to find in the Puritan 
community who had fled from persecution in the old 
country only to inaugurate it on their own account in 
the new. 

Here, in 1676, when the Indian conflict was at its 
height, came from the island a voice clear and strong, 
as many a voice has since sounded from the same re- 
mote and mist-encircled point. To Peter Folger, sur- 
veyor, schoolmaster, lay preacher to the Indians on 
the island, for whom Thomas Mayhew was doing mis- 
sionary work among the Indians, it seemed evident that 
the war, with every terror it had brought, was simply 
the punishment due every Christian in New England 
for their behavior toward Baptists, Quakers and every 
other sect or person who loved and used free speech. 
To speak at all was dangerous ; but Peter Folger had no 
scruples, and his denunciation and his plea " streamed 
forth in one long Jet of manly, nngrammatical, valiant 
doggerel — a ballad just fit to be sung by 'some blind 
crowder, with no rougher voice than rude style,' called, 
' A Looking-Glass for the Times ; or, the Former Spirit 
of New England llevived in this Generation.' " 

There is not even a suggestion of poetry in the entire 
production, but there is an extraordinarj' " frankness 



A MASTER BUILDER. 299 

and force." The writer brings to the bar the then 
" mightiest personages in the land — ministers and ma- 
gistrates ;" tries and condemns them unshrinkingly, and 
then, determined to bear the full consequences of his 
own fearless testimony, weaves " his name and his place 
of abode into the tissue of his verse, thereby notifying 
all who might have any issues to try with him, precisely 
who he was and where he was to be found in case of 
need." 

" I am for peace, and not for war, 

And that 's the reason why 
I write more plain than some men do, 

That use to da'ub and lie ; 
But I shall cease, and set my name 

To what I here insert ; 
Because to be a libeler 

I hate with all my heart. 
From Sherbon town, where now I dwell, 

My name I do put here ; 
Without offense, your real friend, 

It is Peter Folger." 

!N^ine sons and daughters came to the sturdy old sur- 
vej'Or, "strong-brained, free-hearted" and frank, and 
the youngest of these daughters, Abiah Folger, became 
the second wife of Josiah Franklin, adding ten to the 
seven children of the first wife, the youngest son being 
destined to speak his mind with all the audacity and 
much more immediate effect than the grandfather's 
words had produced. 

And thus IS^antucket has its share in Benjamin 
Franklin, and the old town, with its back to the sea, 
fitly symbolizes the "Poor Kichard " era of his life, 



300 A SYLVAN CITY. 

when expediency was temporaril}- his watchword, and 
the power of the strong, intense and earnest genera- 
tions that had blended forces in the veins of this 
youngest son, was, as yet, undirected and uneompre- 
hended. Utihty, practicalit}^, spare hving, much saving 
— all the grind of laborious common life — were in the 
early years. Beyond lay the great sea. Its breath 
touched his brow as he bent over sordid tasks, and 
even in their midst he stole away to pick up some 
fragments on the shore, barel}^ conscious of a power 
that drew him on and that one day would launch him 
on this boundless ocean of knowledge, as bold a voyager 
as ever sailed. 

No life known to American history is divided into 
such distinct and utterly separate periods ; so set apart 
from one another that three biographies ought really to 
be written, 'each covering a period not far from thirty 
years. In the first it is a question which one of the 
many tendencies will have its wa}'. The man of science, 
the literary man, are both suggested and both domi- 
nated by the sharp business qualities which later round 
and develop into the calm and practical statesmanship 
of his maturer vears. As usual in most stories of notable 
lives, the conflict is a long and unconscious one, but 
there are few men who have left as ample material from 
which the inward life may be drawn. 

The outward story is a familiar one ; almost stale and 
trite. Every child can tell it, and Franklin, as he ap- 
pears walking the streets of Philadelphia, with a roll 



A Hf ASTER BUILDER. 301 

under each arm, becomes as much a part of one's men- 
tal picture gallery as Washington with his hatchet. 
Certainly, there is far more of the picturesque element 
in these early years than fell to the lot of most New 
England children, who, like John Wesley's, "cried softly 
and feared the rod," in their babyhood, and who walked 
circumspectly in prescribed paths, until the time ap- 
pointed by temperament and destiny for breaking loose. 
Benjamin Franklin recalled, in old age, seeing twelve 
brothers and sisters at his father's table, and both he 
and his best-loved sister, Jane, bore witness to the hap- 
piness of this early home. 

Ill later life she wrote: "It was, indeed, a lowly 
dwelling we were brought up in, but we were fed plen- 
tifully, made comfortable with fire and clothing, had 
seldom any contention among us ; but all was harmony, 
especially between the heads, and they were universally 
respected." 

The children were welcome and were reared by the 
parents with a cheery fondness, the natural result of 
sound health and of happiness in one another. The lit- 
tle Benjamin's face and form were his mother's, the 
Folger type having been strong enough to perpetuate 
itself even to the present day. From her, too, came the 
keen but quiet humor, the disdain of conventionalities 
and much of the sturdy common sense that remained 
with him through life. The Franklin family, how- 
ever, had traits as strong. Josiah Franklin, though 
living by the labor of his hands to the end, was "hand- 



302 A SYLVA]^ CITY. 

some and agreeable, accomplished and wise. . . He 
drew well, played the violin fairly and his voice in 
singing was sonorous and pleasing. ' ' A brother, Ben- 
jamin, for whom the little Benjamin was named, had 
remained in London, and though suffering both political 
and religious persecution for his opinions, kept up a 
stout and cheerful heart through whatever came, solac- 
ing himself with rhymes as rugged as those in which 
Peter Folger had spoken his mind. Indeed, this rhym- 
ing tendency was part of Franklin's inheritance also, 
and it was encouraged by long poetical epistles from 
Uncle Benjamin, who, delighted with the promising 
accounts of his namesake, kept up as constant inter- 
course as the time allowed. Franklin did not remember 
when he could not read, and writing began almost as 
early, and at seven he wrote a rhyming letter, which 
called out a joyous response from Uncle Benjamin, 
more a prophec}^ than any knew, the verses ending : 

" If first year's shoots such noble clusters send, 

What laden boughs, Engedi-like, may we expect in end ?" 

The "shoots" were already of such promising char- 
acter that the father decided to devote such gifts to the 
church, and placed Benjamin, when eight years old, at 
the Boston Grammar School, where, in less than a year, 
he rose to the head of his class. But to keep him there 
proved impossible with the small means and large fam- ' 
ily dependent upon him, and at ten the school life ended 
forever, and the boy became an assistant in his father's 
shop, cutting candle-wicks, filling candle-moulds, run- 



A MASTER BUILDER. 



303 



ning errands and attending shop. Franklin records in 
his autobiography the strong disUke he had to the busi- 
ness and his longing to go to sea, such longing being 
inevitable in any boy brought up by the sea, and 
running its course like measles and the usual childish 
diseases. To this time belong sundry experiments, in- 
dicating the scientific bent of his mind ; one or two 
inventions which aided him in swimming, among others 
the kite which drew him across the pond. His brother 
Josiah had gone to sea some nine years before, and a 
sister had married the captain of a coasting vessel, both 
of which facts 
were urged as 
reasons w^hy he 
should be allow- 
ed to make at 
least one voyage. 




THE PRINTING PRESS FRANKLIN USED IN LONDON IN 1725. 



304 A SYLVAN CITY. 

In the meantime Uncle Benjamin had, in 1715, come 
from London to spend his last years near his son 
Samuel, and brought with him, to his brother Josiah's 
house, his volumes of poetry and such portions of his 
library as remained unsold. His influence was strong 
enough to keep his namesake at home, and it is not pos- 
sible to tell how much we owe to the gentle-natured, 
guileless, quaint-humored old man, the first four years 
of whose American life were in constant companionship 
with the boy who looked up to him with admiring faith, 
studied his system of short-hand and obeyed his direc- 
tions far more willingly than those of others in authority. 

The truant sailor came home, and twelve brothers 

and sisters gathered to the feast made for him. Uncle 

Benjamin furnishing a contribution, which is still to be 

seen in one of his volumes of rhyme, where the record 

reads : 

"The Third part of the 107 psalm, Which Follows Next, 
I composed to sing at First meeting with my Nephew Jo- 
siah Franklin. But being unaffected with God's Great 
Goodn^ In his many preservations and Deliverances 
It was coldly entertained." 

We can hardly be surprised at such result, the first 
of the eight verses being in this wise : 

" Those Who in Foreign Lands converse, 
By Ships for Traffiek and Commerce, 
Behold great Wonders in the Deep, 
Which God's prescribed bounds doe keep." 

The unappreciated poet bore no malice, but continued 
such compositions, sometimes varying the monotony by 



A MASTER BUILDER. 305 

giving them curious shapes upon the page, expanding 
or dwindhng as his fancy dictated, till 1727, when he 
died, at the age of seventy-seven, the last years of his 
life having been spent with his own son, though till the 
last he retained his admiration for the namesake who 
was at that time established in Philadelphia. Pre- 
viously to this there had been many speculations be- 
fore any settled career could be determined upon. Up 
to eleven years old he remained his father's assistant, 
but the heartil3'-disliked duties cannot have weighed 
heavily upon him, as he found time for the devouring of 
many books, and was also a leader in every sport open 
to the boy of that day, including much entirely original 
mischief. The boyhood must have been a happy one, 
for as long as Franklin lived his heart yearned toward 
Boston, and at eighty-two years old he spoke of it to 
eTohn Lathrop as "that beloved place." And we may 
be sure that every event in the Boston of that day, from 
the hanging of the pirates in 1716 to the keeping of the 
Puritan Fast and Thanksgiving, as well as the King's 
birthday, Guy Fawkes' Day and the two great fairs held 
each year, was not only remembered but considered by 
this wide-eyed and questioning boy, who left no nook 
of the crooked town unexplored. 

In the meantime James Franklin, who had learned 
the trade of a printer in London, had returned to Bos- 
ton with types and a press of his own, and it was set- 
tled that as Benjamin's strongest love was for books, 
that printing was his natural vocation. His father, with 



306 A SYLVAN CITY. 

a judgment not common to the fathers of that or any 
period, had visited with him the workshops of carpen- 
ters, braziers, turners and other craftsmen, watching to 
see in what the lad would take the most interest, though 
with no result beyond a certain insight into various 
trades that was of great use when he came to experi- 
ments in natural science. 

For this particular brother the boy had small affec- 
tion, and dreaded the long apprenticeship. " In a little 
time," he writes in the famous autobiography, "I made 
great proficiency in the business, and became a useful 
hand to my brother. I now had access to better books. 
An acquaintance with the apprentices of booksellers en- 
abled me sometimes to borrow a small one, which I was 
careful to return soon and clean. Often I sat up in my 
room reading the greatest part of the night, when the 
book was borrowed in the evening and returned early in 
the morning, lest it should be missed or wanted." 

"Better books !" Year after year the story was the 
same, the boy stretching out always for something bet- 
ter than he had known. Already a few books had laid 
the foundations of both character and expression, Plu- 
tarch and Bunyan and Defoe having given him that mas- 
tery of clear and vivid statement, " that pure, pithy, racy 
and delightful diction, which he never lost and which 
makes him still one of the great exemplars of modern 
English prose." 

An even stronger influence laid the foundation of 
much of the good work done in later life. Cotton 




ELECTRICAL MACHINE. 



A MASTER BUILDER. 309 

Mather is best known to us as the hanger of witches, 
and we are apt to judge him from this standpoint ; yet, 
as Parton puts it: "Probably his zeal against the 
witches was as much the offspring of his benevolence 
as his 'Essays to Do Good.' Concede his theory of 
witches, and it had been cruelty to man not to hang 
them." 

In any case these essays had a profound influence 
upon Franklin, who, at eighty years old, wrote to a 
friend describing the book as it first came into his hands 
with several leaves torn out, and adding : " But the re- 
mainder gave me such a turn of thinking as to have an 
influence on my conduct through life ; for I have always 
set a greater value on the character of a doer of good 
than on any other kind of reputation ; and if I have 
been, as you seem to think, a useful citizen the public 
owe the advantage of it to that book." 

Stilted as are the paragrajDhs which make up the scanty 
pages, they hold " a humor, familiar learning, impetuous 
earnestness and yearning tenderness " hardly to be 
looked for in the w^ork of a man described by another 
critic as " a vast literary and religious coxcomb .... 
the idol of a distinguished family ; the prodigy both of 
school and of college ; the oracle of a rich parish ; the 
pet and demi-god of an endless series of sewing so- 
cieties." 

Be this as it may, he had power to influence the boy 
in other ways as well. For Cotton Mather was "the 
originator of a kind of Neighborhood Benefit Societies, 



310 A STLVAIi CITY. 

one of which he endeavored to form in each church, and 
to twenty of which" he himself belonged, and the 
"Points of Consideration" for which, taking the form 
of ten elaborate and comprehensive questions, were evi- 
dently the origin of the "Junto," the famous club 
founded by Franklin in 1730, a full history of which is 
given in the article in the present series on the Phila- 
delphia Library. 

Franklin's tendency to verse found expression in vari- 
ous doggerel ballads, then one of the most popular forms 
of literature, and hawked about both in town and coun- 
try. Two of them became at once ver}^ popular, and the 
3^oung author was so puffed up by his success that his 
father "came to the rescue of his good sense, pointed out 
the faults of the performance," and thus saved us from 
a deluge of inferior verse, which Franklin could never 
quite decide to let alone. But his father's influence was 
strong enough to increase the boy's desire for a clear and 
elegant prose style, and opportunity for practice came in 
the theological and other arguments with John Collins, 
a boy of almost equal fondness for books, and of an ar- 
gumentative turn of mind. At this period Franklin was 
passing through the disputatious stage common to most 
keen-witted boys — a tendency he outgrew and Anally dis- 
liked ; but his pen then, as in later years, was more easily 
commanded than his tongue, for Franklin was never a 
fluent talker, though when warmed and excited by con- 
versation, his rather slow words were often brilliant 
and always to the point. Collins' style was far better 



A MASTER BUILD EB. 



311 






1 ndi, 



''j'l 







FRANKLIN'S COURT SWORD, 
WITH INSCRIPTION 
ON THE BLADE. 



labyrinth of questions. He 
which remained with him 
power of a quiet courtesy, and 
be gained by simply refraining 
or alarming the self-love of an 

The works of Shaftesbury and 
this period into his hands, and the 



than that of his antagonist, 
and after various letters had 
passed, the father, secretly 
proud of Benjamin's mastery 
in other directions, pointed 
this out, and urged more care 
and attention. A volume of 
the Spectator at this time fell 
in his Avay, and he read and 
re-read it with delight, taking 
the flowing periods as his 
model, and endeavoring to re- 
produce the whole as exactly 
as possible from memory. 
The "Memorabilia of So- 
crates" he studied with 
the same intensity, adopt- 
ing the Socratic method 
of arguing and discon- 
certing and tangling 
his opponent in a 
learned then a lesson 
through life — the 
the victory often to 
from " wounding 
opponent." 
Collins fell at 
liberal ten- 



dency of his life was already sufficiently marked to make 



313 A SYLVAN CITY. 

him seize upon them with avidity, and, for a year or so, 
to convince him that Deism was the only rational form 
of faith. As in his early boyhood, he used a part of 
the night for study, and gained also a large part of the 
noon-hour, from the fact that, with his other theories, 
he had adopted vegetarianism. In spite of his generous 
and well-developed physique, and the ardent tempera- 
ment with which one generally associates a love for the 
pleasures of the table, Franklin was always exceedingly 
abstinent, and at this time absolutely indifferent in the 
matter of food. 

Precisely who the Graham of that period was we are 
not told, but a small treatise on the advantages of vege- 
tarianism, with various rules for the preparation of such 
food, had fallen in his way, and Franklin proposed to 
his brother that he should give him half the money paid 
for his board and let him board himself. The experi- 
ment was tried. Half of this half, it was proved, could 
be easily saved, and so the fund for precious books be 
increased ; and Franklin, like Shelley in a later genera- 
tion, dined on hasty pudding or rice, or a slice of bread 
and some raisins, and then turned to the books, in 
which he says, " I made the greater progress from that 
greater clearness of head and quicker apprehension 
which usually attend temperance in eating and drink- 
ing." 

Before a year's apprenticeship had ended, James 
Franklin became a printer of the first sensational news- 
paper ; sensational, in that it argued the merits of what 



A MASTER BUILDER. 313 

was then the great heterodoxy — inoculation for the 
small-pox. The fury of remonstrance and indignation 
with which this was received can hardly now be under- 
stood, though its story is that of every reform since the 
world began. The first printer of the first American 
newspaper, which appeared at Boston, Thursday, Sep- 
tember 25th, 1690, had come speedily into collision with 
the "Lord Brethren," then supreme in all matters of 
state or church, and his paper was suppressed at the 
fourth number. Fourteen years later, another took its 
place, leading a troubled and repressed existence. There 
was small encouragement to start another, but in Decem- 
ber, 1719, the attempt was made, James Franklin being 
the printer. Dissensions followed, and the work was sud- 
denly taken from him. Pride and pocket both suffered, 
and James Franklin, who owned a full share of the fam- 
ily energy, in August, 1721, sent out the first number of 
the New England Courant. " Spirited, witty and dar- 
ing," this paper was a break in the conventional jour- 
nalism of the day. Every liberal in Boston rallied to 
this flag. The Boston tea-pot was agitated by a tem- 
pest, some suggestions of which reached even the remote 
colony of Pennsylvania, and inoculation was at the 
bottom of it all. 

There is no space in which to tell the story, one of the 
most amusing and suggestive in the early history of the 
Colonies. James Franklin went to prison, and Benja- 
min, in the eyes of the law still an iiifant, and thus not 
to be judged for his deeds, seized the press-lever exult- 



314 A SYLVAN CITY. 

ingly and spoke his mind with a freedom very disgust- 
ing to the Lord Brethren, but chuckled over and ap- 
plauded by every liberal-minded man in the town. The 
Council had banned it, but bought the obnoxious sheet 
privately to see what new iniquity might be therein. 
Imprisonment did not subdue the owner, and till 1723 
these troublesome printers afforded matter of conversa- 
tion for the whole country. But " James did not know 
that he had the most valuable apprentice in the world.^ 
and the apprentice knew it too well." The elder bro- 
ther was unjust ; the younger one resentful. Quarrel 
after quarrel left each more embittered, and in spite of a 
conscientious determination to hold to his contract, the 
task at last became too difficult, and Franklin took the 
step which made him the world's property and not Bos- 
ton's — he ran away. 

Three days' sailing brought him to New York, then a 
Dutch town with no room or call for English printers. 
William Bradford, to whom he applied, recommended 
Philadelphia as the most likely spot in which to obtain 
employment, and without hesitation he took passage 
for Perth Amboy in a crazy old boat, and, after an ex- 
tremely uncomfortable as well as dangerous passage, 
walked the fifty miles from Perth Amboy to Philadel- 
phia. 

The world knows by heart every detail of his first 
day there. Employment was at once obtained with a 
new-comer in the town, one Samuel Keimer, long-haired 
and bearded in an age when close cropping was impera- 



A MASTER BUILDER. 



315 



tive, and with a turn of mind equally strong in opposi- 
tion to accepted theories. Franklin found lodging in 
the home of the young lad}'- who had looked smilingly 
at the travel-stained and hungry voyager, and a time 
of quiet work and of pleasant life began. Good pay, 
congenial friends and more time for reading and study 
increased his liking for the easy-going city ; and when 
finally his secret was discovered, and he was promised 
full forgiveness and more privileges if he would return 
home, he declared his fixed resolution to remain in 
Philadelphia. 

The letter in which he stated the reasons for his 
course, written with a dispassionateness not to be ex- 
pected, chanced to be seen by Sir William Keith, the 
Governor of Pennsylvania, through whom one of 




MEMENTOES FROM FRANCE. 



816 A SYLVAN CITY, 

Franklin's most disastrous j-et most fruitful of expe- 
riences was to come; a man whose first craving was pop- 
ularity, and who promised always far in advance of any 
possibility of performance. He urged that Franklin 
should set up for himself in business, having, to the 
profound astonishment not only of Keimer but the en- 
tire neighborhood, called in person on the young printer, 
and even followed up the suggestion by writing to the 
father. 

Josiah Franklin, pleased as he could not help but be 
at the honor to which the lad had alread}^ come, was too 
wary and sagacious a man not to ponder carefully every 
side of the question. The son, meantime, set sail in 
April, 1724, for Boston, and after a dangerous voyage 
of over a fortnight, astonished his relatives by ap- 
pearing among them. Handsomely dressed, owning 
a watch, and with five pounds in silver in his pock- 
ets, he met his brother with an ill-concealed elation, 
which exasperated him to the highest pitch and com- 
pleted the breach already made. The father refused 
positively to set him up in business at that time, re- 
garding him as too young, but promised to help if, at 
twenty-one, he had saved enough to prove his capa- 
bility of taking care of himself; and Franklin returned 
to Philadelphia this time with the blessing and good 
wishes of both parents. Collins, his early friend, joined 
him at New York, but unfortunately had fallen into 
intemperate habits, and became, from that time on, a 
hindrance and perpetual source of mortification. He 



A MASTER BUILDER. 317 

not only lived at Franklin's expense but continually bor- 
rowed of him, encroaching thus on a small sum collected 
by Franklin for a friend, the lending of which he char- 
acterizes as " the first great error " of his life. Fortu- 
nately a quarrel followed, in which Collins was solely to 
blame, and the connection was broken, never to be re- 
sumed. 

In the meantime the elder Franklin's letter had been 
received by Sir William Keith, who was not in the least 
disposed to give up his project of establishing his protege 
in life, and who finally agreed to send to England for 
such outfit as was necessary, Franklin having made an 
inventory of every desirable article, the value of which 
was nearly one hundred pounds. Governor Keith, on 
reading it over, suggested that a more profitable bargain 
might be made if the young printer went over and se- 
lected for himself, and, after some discussion, it was 
settled that Franklin should cross in the ship sailing 
regularly between London and Philadelphia. But as 
months would pass before the fixed time of leaving, the 
voyages being made but once a year from each port, 
Franklin resolved to keep the affair entirely secret. Had 
he mentioned it, there were many who could have told 
him the Governor's real reputation as a "vain, false, 
gasconading popularity-hunter ;" but even then Frank- 
lin was j)robably too fascinated by the new friend to 
have listened. Six of the happiest months of his life 
passed in this waiting. He had then become engaged 
to Deborah Keed. and " youth, hope, prosperity, conge- 



318 A SYLVAIf CITY. 

nial friends and reciprocated love combined to render 
his working days serene and his holidays memorably 
happy." 

His special intimates at this time were three young 
men of his own rank in life, James Ralph being the one 
whose fortunes most affected those of Franklin. All 
' loved books, and were fond of composing poetry after the 
easy model set by Pope, and the story of their friend- 
ship and some of the tricks played upon one another is 
one of the most vivacious pieces of writing in the auto- 
biography. Sir William Keith often invited the young 
printer to his house, and promised him letters to many 
influential friends, as well as a letter of credit to be used 
in buying type, paper and press. But whenever Frank- 
lin called for them, another time was fixed, and thus on 
to the very day of sailing, when the Governor sent word 
that he would meet him at Newcastle and make all final 
arrangements. When Newcastle was reached no Gover- 
nor appeared, but as a bag of letters was brought on 
board by his agent, the puzzled Franklin accepted the 
statement that an extraordinary pressure of business had 
prevented the expected interview, and waited till the 
captain could take time to open the mail-bag for him. 

He was not alone, for James Ralph had decided to ac- 
company him, and the two, fhiding no room in the chief 
cabin, had taken passage in the steerage. At the last 
moment Andrew Hamilton, a great man in the colony, 
who had secured part of the cabin for himself and son, 
was induced, by the offer of an enormous fee, to return, 




franklin's music stand — HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 



A MASTER BUILD EB. 331 

in order to conduct an important law case, and with his 
usual good fortune, Franklin was invited to take posses- 
sion of the vacated berths, and lived royally all through 
the voyage on the store of provisions Mr. Hamilton had 
had no time to remove. Not until near the end of the 
voyage was there any opportunit}^ of examining the 
niail-bag, and then Franklin was confounded to find no 
letters for him in person, and only a handful directed in 
his care. When these Were delivered, they proved not 
to have been written by Keith at all. Franklin told the 
story to Mr. Denham, an influential friend made on the 
voyage, and then, for the first time, learned the real 
reputation of the rascally Governor. 

With but ten pounds in his pocket, and James Kalph, 
penniless and helpless, quartered upon him, he faced 
the situation with his usual quiet courage, took humble 
lodgings, and at once sought for employment, easily ob- 
tained, as he was master in his trade. Few men have 
ever lived with whom resentment at such treatment 
would not linger and prompt revenge, but one of Frank- 
lin's loveliest traits was his inability to harbor an in- 
jury and his instant forgiveness of all personal wrongs. 
His comment in the autobiography was written many 
years after Keith had bitterly expiated his many errors, 
but even in the beginning he let the matter drop as one 
in which words could neither help nor hinder, and took 
up a life which, hard as it was, had many compensa- 
tions. There must have been a certain mental discour- 
agement, for during this year in London he made little 



332 A SYLVAJ^ CITY. 

eifort to save, spending freely of the small portion that 
Ralph's dependence left him. He frequented the the- 
atre, read with his usual assiduity, paying the keeper of 
a second-hand book-store a certain sum per year for 
the free use of his books, and as he became more and 
more absorbed in both pleasure and study, the image of 
Deborah Reed gradually faded from his mind, and he 
ceased a correspondence which had been at best infre- 
quent and fragmentary. Other complications had arisen 
resulting from his connection with Ralph, but the story 
is too long to find room here. It was a period of spirit- 
ual apathy, almost of recklessness, and the most san- 
guine friend might have doubted if the young printer 
would ever become more than the busy and successful 
man of the world. ^Nevertheless, the tendency was 
never downward, but always steadily upward, and thus 
when Mr. Denham, the friend made on shipboard, and 
with whom he had kept up an acquaintance ever since 
his landing, offered him a clerkship in Philadelphia, he 
accepted joyfull}'. He was tired of London, and dis- 
couraged and dissatisfied with his life there, and when 
the long passage of eighty-two days ended, and he saw 
once more the streets of the sober city, he rejoiced witli 
all his heart. The diary kept on this voyage is one of 
the most interesting of his life, not so much from any 
incident therein, as from his close observation of every 
natural fact, and his shrewd and telling comment upon 
it. "We see a strong masculine understanding united 
with sensitive, tender feelings ... a mind alive to 



A MASTER BUILDER. 333 

the beauties, but also most curious as to the processes 
of nature ; and liere and tliere a toucli of worldly wis- 
dom, indicating a youth destined to win a liberal por- 
tion of what the world hastens to bestow upon those 
who serve it as it wishes to be served." 

One of the first persons encountered on landing was 
Sir William Keith, who had sufficient grace to look 
ashamed, and who passed without speaking. Work 
began at once. Mr. Denham stocked a large store on 
Water street ; Franklin became an inmate of his house, 
and there seemed every prospect that he would end his 
days as a Philadelphia merchant. But within four 
months from the opening of the store severe pleurisy 
attacked both master and clerk. Mr. Denham died, 
and Franklin, when he recovered, found himself once 
more adrift, without employment. He sought at once 
for another clerkship — by no means easy to find — and 
after some days of waiting, accepted unwillingly an 
offer from Keimer, who had now a stationery shop, as 
well as a printing office. Both were in the chaotic state 
which seemed natural to all Keimer's undertakings. 
The five hands were totally unacquainted with the busi- 
ness, and the new foreman was expected to train them 
and to superintend every detail of the establishment. 
But Keimer had no intention of retaining such a rival 
longer than was necessary to put the business on a firm 
basis, and, forgetting his usual crafty discretion, took 
advantage of some slight inadvertence on Franklin's 
part to give him the quarter's warning stipulated for by 



324 A SYLVAN CITY. 

either side in the making of their contract. The justly- 
incensed foreman marched out of the shop, determined 
never to return, asking Meredith, his chief friend there, 
to bring to him in tlie evening such articles as had been 
left behind, and then went home to reflect upon the 
situation. 

It was not a happy one. Four years had passed since 
his flight from Boston, and their ending found him still 
a journeyman printer, in debt, and with very little 
money on hand. He thought bitterly for a time of 
giving up the fight and returning to his father's house, 
and as he brooded saw only the errors that he had com- 
mitted ; Deborah Reed's pale and troubled face rose be- 
fore him and looked the reproach she had never spoken. 
Urged by her parents, she had, after long waiting for let- 
ters from Franklin, married a man who proved not only 
brutal but unfaithful, and, after a short and miserable 
married life, had returned to her father's house and re- 
sumed her maiden name. In later years, Franklin 
wrote in his autobiography : "I consider my giddiness 
and inconstancy when in London as, in a great degree, 
the cause of her unhappiness ;" and in this present crisis 
he seemed to himself doubly guilty. 

With Meredith's coming and the long talk over ways 
and means, more cheerful thoughts arose. Franklin had 
already been of such service in checking the young man's 
intemperate habits, that the father was ready to advance 
capital to set them up in business, though Meredith's 
time belonged to Keimer until the spring. A day or 



A MASTER BUILDER. 



325 



two of discussion followed, 
and then Keimer, who had 
come to his senses — in other 
words, received an order 
which he was powerless to 
fill unless Franklin would 
aid him — sent a conciliating 
message, and the connection 
was for a time renewed. 
Some paper money was to 
be printed under the super- 
vision of the Legislature 
at Burlington, and here 
the two spent the winter, 
Franklin making many 
friends whom he retained 
through life. The "Junto" 
had been founded directly 
after his return to Philadel- 
phia, and proved of the 
greatest service, not only to 
its founder, but to Phila- 
delphia and the whole 
United States, similar or- 
ganizations being formed 
at many points. During a 
large part of his life Frank- 
lin took the greatest delight 
In this club, and the interest 




CLOCK IN THE PHILADEL- 
PHIA LIBRARY. 



326 A STL VAN CITY. 

was even stronger in the beginning. A manuscript 
book is still in existence filled with plans for essays, sug- 
gestions for debate and replies to questions, and it was 
a powerful influence in determining his style, both as 
writer and speaker. 

With the following spring Franklin entered into part- 
nership with his friend Meredith, and began the busi- 
ness career which lasted for many successful and 
honorable years. The story of its early days is filled 
with an intensely powerful inward experience. At fif- 
teen, Franklm had become a free-thinker, but an ardent 
and sensitive nature is never satisfied with negative be- 
liefs, and having gradually come to the conclusion that 
mere denial held no power to insure a virtuous life, he 
formulated for himself a simple creed, made up of six 
articles : 

" I. There is one God, the Creator of all things. 
"II. God governs the world by his providence. 
"III. God ought to be worshipped. 
" IV. Doing good to men is the service most acceptable 
to God. 

" V. Man is immortal. 

"VI. In the future world the disembodied souls of men 
will be dealt with justly." 

The creed ended, he wrote out a liturgy for daily use, 
filled with the deepest desires of a noble mind and of 
profoundest interest to every student of character. The 
little pocket prayer-book in which the whole is recorded 
is written with a careful elegance which witnesses the 
fervent interest he felt. A formal statement is first 



A MASTER BUILDER. 327 

made, called "First Principles," the more speculative 
portion of which was in time ignored, or rather con- 
densed into the simple form given above. A solemn 
and tender invocation opens the liturgy, and a series of 
petitions follow, as vital and deeply devotional as any- 
thing in the range of genuine religious biography, ^o 
man, who daily, even in part, lived the life or rose into 
the atmosphere which such thought made natural, 
could fail of attaining in the end precisely the poise and 
calm that make Franklin like no other figure in our 
history. The growth was slow. Now and again came 
terrible lapses, for at twenty-one his illegitimate son 
was born, and the Autobiography records many sudden 
yieldings to temptation. But the sins were those of 
a hot and eager blood — never malicious or base, and 
repented with a genuineness that was at least partial 
atonement. From this date on there is steady progress. 
Marriage and a quiet, happy life began; the "Poor 
Richard" era, in which his business ability brought 
him the long-waited-for success, and in which, though 
often tempted, he steadily put away every temptation 
to petty thought or action. Worldlj' wisdom was strong 
in him. He knew the weaknesses of men and could 
easily have traded upon them, and his keen humor 
could as easily have degenerated into sarcasm and 
cynicism. But each day was governed by a will steadily 
stronger for good. His hard apprenticeship to life was 
at an end, and before him lay the years each one more 
p^^l more filled with the best life of a good man and 



328 A SYLVAJSr CITY. 



good citizen, earnest, sincere and true. As printer, 
then publisher, he became " chief instructor, stimulatoi 
and cheerer," first of Pennsylvania, then of all the 
colonies. 

When the colonial epoch ended, his mark as man of 
science was already made, and his name famous at 
home and abroad. He was fifty-nine years old, and 
thus " on the verge of old age ; his splendid career as a 
scientific discoverer and as a citizen seemed rounding to 
its full ; yet there then lay outstretched before him— 
though he knew it not — another career of just twenty- 
five years, in which his political services to his country 
and to mankind were to bring him more glory than he 
had gained from all he had done before." 

To give the further story of Franklin's life in a few 
pages would result in simply a list of dates, each with 
its fact of positive accomplishment. Such story is no 
part of the present article, the aim of which has simply 
been to give the beginnings, the foundation-stones, laid 
one by one, slowly and with pain, and with small thought 
what noble and stately edifice would one day rest upon 
them. Even more than to her founder, Philadelphia owes 
to Franklin a debt it can never pay — schools, libraries, 
local improvements of every sort being the direct and 
personal work of this untiring and creative mind. Each 
year left him more benignant in look and tone. Nothing 
moved him from the cheerful serenity, the gentle humor 
with which he looked upon life. He endured in later 
years a complication of diseases, which brought the ex- 




,,,., BENJAMINS 

ilJ. ^,..a\Pimr/l^^ %{i^^"A.A FRANKLIN 



IN THE BUKIAL GROUND, FIFTH AND AKCH STREETS. 



A MASTER BUILDER. 331 

tremity of physical suffering, but courage was strong, 
and he worked on almost to the last. Worn with pain, 
he welcomed the end. His last look was on the pic- 
ture of Christ which had hung for many years near 
his bed, and of which he often said, " That is the 
picture of one who came into the world to teach men 
to love one another." The resolute repression of all 
signs of suffering, every indication of the long conflict, 
passed at once. He lay smiling in a quiet slumber, 
and the smile lingered when the cofRn-lid shut him 
in. His grave is in the heart of the city he loved, and 
even the careless passer-by pauses a moment to read 
the simple legend. 

Another epitaph, written in 1729, in early manhood, 
holds his chief characteristics, his humor, his quiet 
assurance of better things to come, whether for this 
world or the next : 

THE BODY 

OF 

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, 

PRINTER 

(like the cover OP AN OLD BOOK, 

ITS CONTENTS TORN OUT, 

AND STRIPT OF ITS LETTERING AND GILDING), 

LIES HERE, FOOD FOR WORMS. 

YET THE WORK ITSELF SHALL NOT BE LOST, 

FOR IT WILL, AS HE BELIEVES, APPEAR ONCE MORE. 

IN A NEW AND MORE BEAUTIFUL EDITION, 

CORRECTED AND AMENDED 

BY 

THE AUTHOR. 

These curiously witty yet reverent lines may fitly end 
the sketch of a life too large to be compressed into 



333 A SYLVAN CITY. 

written pages. Wife and child lie near him — the little 
son who knew only four years of mortal life, and whose 
memory lingered with the father through every chance 
and change of the half century that divided them. It 
is a simple monument, but his best record is in the 
minds of earnest men for whose lives he laid better 
foundations^ than without him could have been possible. 



EARLY ABOLITIONISTS. 



!N'o NATION on earth has quite the capacity for 
forgetting injuries that characterizes th^ American 
people. Where the brooding, sullen Saxon tempera- 
ment is strongest, the clear sky, the swift winds and 
wide horizons of the new home, and the busy life as 
well, have altered hereditary characteristics and the ca- 
pacity for resentment has lessened. Even when most 
deeply stirred the brutal element has, save in the lowest 
class, almost totally disappeared. Persistence to the 
point of doggedness until the end is gained, and then a 
good-humored shaking of hands and a taking for 
granted that all differences are buried and the future to 
hold a common pui*pose and a common progress to the 
same end, characterizes the American of to-day. And 
in the fear that his adversary's feelings may be wounded 
he refuses to preserve records of strife, and almost for- 
gets himself how the quarrel went on or why it began 
at all. 

The capacity for apology increases year by year. In 
the reaction against the intolerance and bigotry of our 
fathers, we forget the sturdy virtues such traits covered 
or represented. Some one has summed up the Ameri- 
can character as a " mush of concession," and our treat- 

333 



334 A SYLVAN CITY. 

ment of offenders — whether the criminal pardoned out 
while the sound of the sentence to just punishment is 
still in his ears, or the condoning of all offenses against 
social law and life — would seem to confirm the verdict. 
That an emergency finds always determined and reso- 
lute men and women ready for it, does not hinder the 
fact that the arising of such emergency could often have 
been prevented, had common sense or any wise forecast 
been used in the beginning. The eagerness to avoid 
offense and the determination to have every one as com- 
fortable as possible stand always in the way of any re- 
view of past differences or future possibilities of differ- 
ence. Eeminiscence is frowned upon, and thus one of 
the most effectual means of developing manhood and 
genuine patriotism is lost. The boy's blood may tingle 
as he hears 

*' How well Horatius kept the bridge, 
In the brave days of old ;" 

but the brave day that is but j^esterday is a sealed book, 
its story, if told at all, given in a whisper subdued 
enough to prevent any possibility of discomfort for sen- 
sitive or squeamish listener. 

"What was it all for, anyway?" asked a boy of 
twelve not long ago, who, in his school histor}'^ of the 
United States had come to the civil war, and who, like 
a large proportion of the boys of this generation, found 
it of more remote interest even than the war of the 
Revolution. His father had been one of its volunteers, 
and the family record held name after name of friends 




W. U. lUKNEbS, D. D.,1,L>.D. 



EARL Y AB OLITIONISTS. 337 

fallen in the conflict we are all forgetting ; yet the child, 
true to our American theories, was growing up with no 
sense of what the issue meant, and with an impatient 
disregard of worn-out details. 

We ''love mercy " so well that we forget that the 
first clause of the old command is to "do justly," and 
so year by year the capacity for justice lessens. Keen 
moral sense is blunted, and life becomes more and more 
a system of shadings, and black and white simply 
clouded, uncertain and dirty gray. 

Such word seems necessary in beginning any mention 
of a party to whose unconquerable and marvelous per- 
sistence is due every result of good in the conflict which 
ended forever ail need of their further work. That the 
early Abolitionists were often bitter, fierce, intolerant, 
was the inevitable consequence of an intense purpose, 
and the narrowness that, save in the rarest exceptions, 
is the necessary accompaniment of intensity. It is never 
the broad and quiet lake, knowing no obstruction, that 
rushes on to the sea. It is the stream shut in by rocks 
and fed from hidden sources that swells and deepens till 
no man's hand can bind or stay the sweeping current. 

It is possible that the time has not yet come for dis- 
passionate statement, but it is also a question if dispas- 
sionateness be the only quality it is worth while for 
Americans to cultivate. Too often it ends as indiffer- 
entism, and when that stage is reached progress becomes 
impossible. In spite of our modern tendencies, it is 
still worth while to feel strongly, to believe intensely, 



338 A SYLVAN CITY. 

to live as if life had meaning, and there is no stronger 
incitement than the knowledge of earnest lives lived 
through difficulties of which we have but faintest con- 
ception, and ending often without any consciousness 
that their purposes had been recognized or their dreams 
become realities. 

Quiet but alwa3^s untiring and undaunted workers, 
these stead}^ clear-eyed men and women passed over to 
the majority, and, like the workers of an earlier day, 
they "received not the promise, God having provided 
some better thing for us, that they without us should 
not be made perfect." Comprehension of their princi- 
ples, loving remembrance of every faithful act is the 
only method in which through us they may have full 
sense of what their labor meant, and thus find the heart 
of the old words, which, if they mean anything, mean 
surely that till we do understand, their happiness lacks 
its full completion. 

Philadelphia and Boston represent the most earnest 
work of a period, the fire and fervor of which are now 
almost incomprehensible. With Philadelphia, the first 
step taken was by William Penn, who, in his second 
visit, labored anxiously to undo certain results of his 
action which he had not foreseen. In 1G85, sending 
over various directions to his deputies concerning ser- 
vants to be employed, he had written : " It were better 
they were blacks, for then a man has them while they 
live." At this time negroes had been brought in in 
some numbers, and the most conscientious Friends held 



EARL Y AB OLITIONISTS. 339 

slaves, though as early as 1671 George Fox had advised 
the Friends in Barbadoes to "train up their slaves in 
the fear of God, to cause their overseers to deal mildly 
and gently with them, and, after certain years of servi- 
tude, they should make them free." 

The necessity for such measures had become evident 
to Penn ; and the German Friends who settled German- 
town, and who, in 1688, brought before the Yearly 
Meeting the question " concerning the lawfulness and 
unlawfulness of buying and keeping negroes, "pressed it 
still further upon his attention. By 1696 so many evils 
had resulted that advice was issued at the Yearly Meet- 
ing " that Friends be careful not to encourage the bring- 
ing in any more negroes; and that such that have 
negroes be careful of them, bring them to meetings, 
have meetings with them in their families, and restrain 
them from loose and lewd living as much as in them 
lies, and from rambling abroad on First-day or other 
times. ' ' 

From this date began a very gradual emancipation, 
but eighty years passed before the entire prohibition of 
slaveholding was made part of the discipline of the so- 
ciety. In 1700 Penn brought before the Provincial Coun- 
cil a laAv for regulating the marriage of negroes, but it 
failed to pass, and the record tells how "he mourned 
over the state of the slaves, but his attempts to improve 
their condition by legal enactments were defeated in the 
house of Assembly." 

In his own religious society he was more successful. 



340 A SYLVAN CITY. 

the minute of the Monthly Meeting in the same year 
having this item : "Our dear friend and governor having 
laid before the meeting a concern that hath laid upon 
his mind for some time concerning the negroes and In- 
dians ; that Friends ought to be very careful in dis- 
charging a good conscience toward them in all respects, 
but more especially for the good of their souls, and that 
they might, as frequent as may be, come to meeting on 
First-days; upon consideration whereof this meeting 
concludes to appoint a meeting for the negroes, to be kept 
once a month, and that their masters give notice thereof 
in their own families and be present with them at the 
said meetings as frequent as may be." 

Though charged with having died a slaveholder, it 
was certainly not because no proper means were taken 
for liberating his slaves, for in his will, made in 1701, 
Penn liberated every slave in his possession, the Avill 
being now in the hands of Thomas Gilpin, of Philadel- 
phia, and containing this clause : " I give to my blacks 
their freedom as is under my hand already, and to old 
Sam one hundred acres, to be his children's, after he and 
his wife are dead, forever." 

His intentions were not perfectly carried out, as is 
evident from one of James Logan's letters to Hannah 
Penn, written in 1721, and now to be seen in the Histori- 
cal Society's rooms, in which he says : " The proprietor, 
in a will left with me at his departure hence, gave all his 
negroes their freedom, hut this is entirely private ; how- 
ever, there are very few left." Any failure in action on 




ISAAC T. HOPPER. 



EARL T AB OLITIONISTS, 343 

his executors' part need not, however, be charged upon 
Penn himself, who must, without question, rank as the 
first Philadelphia Abolitionist. 

Only an occasional remonstrance was heard at rare in- 
tervals for many years. The love of money and of power 
was too strong among the wealthy merchants of the city 
or the large planters in the outlying country, and nothing 
could be obtained from the Yearly Meeting but a mild 
suggestion that further importation of slaves was un- 
desirable, while many a serious, drab-coated member 
argued with glibness in the same line of defense of op- 
pression and avarice followed by Presbyterian and Epis- 
copalian doctors of divinity, and, indeed, by the churches 
in general. l!^othing could well be darker than the out- 
look, yet in that darkness a force was working unknown 
and unseen, the first visible spark showing itself at a 
point so remote and inconspicuous that it held no sug- 
gestion of the steady light soon to shine out with a glow 
and intensity that even to-day is as powerful as a hundred 
years ago. 

Few souls since the Christian era began have held 
more of the spirit of the Master than that of John 
Woolman, living and dying in poverty and obscurity, 
yet leaving in his journal a record of self-denying labor 
so simple and tender, not only in spirit but in language 
also, that one need not wonder at Charles Lamb's en- 
thusiasm as he wrote : " Get the writings of John Wool- 
man by heart." Born in 1720, his first action against 
the principles of slavery was not taken till 1742, when, 



344 A SYLVAN CITY. 

in drawing up an instrument for the transfer of a slave, 
he felt a sudden and strong scruple against such dese- 
cration of anything owning a soul. From this dated a 
life-long testimony against slavery, and for many years 
he traveled from point to point, never vehement or de- 
nunciatory, but pleading always, with a gentleness that 
proved irresistible, the cause of the oppressed. 

In the meantime a quaint and curious figure had en- 
tered the same way, but with small thought of persua- 
sion or consideration. Coming to Philadelphia from 
the West Indies where he had become deeply interested 
in the condition of the slaves, Benjamin Lay, furious at 
finding the same evil existing there, shook off the dust 
of the faithless city and took up his dwelling a few 
miles out. Here he lived in a natural cave, shghtly 
improved by a ceiling of beams, drinking only water 
from a spring near his door and eating only vegetables. 
He refused to wear any garment or eat anj^ food whose 
manufacture or preparation involved the loss of animal 
life or was the result of slave labor. On the last point 
John Woolman was in full accord with him, but found 
it a struggle to wear the undyed homespun which he 
finally assumed, as the necessary badge of the simplicity 
he preached. 

No concern for the prejudices or feelings of others 
hampered the career of the irrepressible Benjamin, 
whose figure was no less eccentric than his life. " Only 
four and a half feet high, hunchbacked, with projecting 
chest, legs small and uneven, arms longer than his legs, 



.^?5t?^^^^^ 




LEWIS TAPPAN. 



EARL Y AB 0LITI0NIST8. 347 

a huge head, showing only beneath the enormous white 
hat, large, solemn eyes and a prominent nose ; the rest 
of his face covered with a snowy semi-circle of beard fall- 
ing low on his breast," this fierce and prophetical 
brownie or kobold made unexpected dashes into the 
calm precincts of the Friends' meeting-houses, and was 
the gad-fly of every assembly. A fury of protest pos- 
sessed him — a power of energetic denunciation abso- 
lutely appalling to the steady-minded Quakers. At one 
time when the Yearly Meeting was in progress, he sud- 
denly appeared marching up the aisle in his long, white 
overcoat, regardless of the solemn silence prevailing. 
He stopped suddenly when midway and exclaiming, 
"You slaveholders! Why don't you throw off your 
Quaker coats as I do mine, and show yourselves as you 
are ?" at the same moment threw off" his coat. Under- 
neath was a military coat and a sword dangling against 
his heels. " Holding in one hand a large book, he 
drew his sword witli the other. ' In the sight of God,' 
he cried, 'you are as guilty as if you stabbed your 
slaves to the heart, as I do this book !' suiting the ac- 
tion to the word, and piercing a small bladder filled 
with the juice of the poke-weed {i^hytolacca decandra), 
which he had concealed between the covers, and. sprin- 
kling as with fresh blood those who sat near him." 

John Woolman's testimony was of quite another 
character, but Benjamin Lay was the counterpart as 
well as forerunner of many less rational agitators who 
in later years could never separate the offender from the 



348 A SYLVAN CITY. 

sin often ignorantly and innocently committed. Offen- 
sive as his course was felt to be, it was one of the active 
forces which no doubt had aided in paving the way to 
the decisive action of 1758, a date important not only 
in the history of the anti-slavery cause but as one of the 
most important religious convocations the Christian 
church has ever kno^vn. Through the general business 
John Woolman sat silent, and silent, too, as one and 
another faithful Friend gave in their testimony against 
any further toleration of slavery as a system. Then he 
rose and made an appeal, whose solemn tenderness 
still thrills every reader, and which, when eye and voice 
and all the influence of the gentle yet intensely earnest 
presence were added, rendered more than momentary op- 
position impossible. Then and there the meeting agreed 
that the injunction of our Lord and Saviour to do to 
others as we would that others should do to us, should 
induce Friends who held slaves " to set them at liberty, 
making a Christian provision for them," and four 
Friends — John Woolman, John Scarborough, Daniel 
Stanton and John Sykes — were approved of as suitable 
persons to visit and treat with such as kept slaves, 
within the limits of the meeting. 

Naturally, outside these limits there was steady op- 
position. The record gives many years of effort in 
which only a proportion could be brought to admit the 
injustice or wrong of slavery, but it was a proportion that 
increased yearl3\ Through all weariness and discour- 
agement John Woolman went his patient way, journey- 



EARL Y AB OLITIONISTS. 349 

ing on foot wherever in the widely-separated settlements 
the voice of the oppressed seemed to call, and leaving 
always behind him a memory of pitying love and devo- 
tion, before which all defenses fell. But the practice, 
though abating, required more active measures, and in 
1776 came the final action of the Yearly Meeting, all 
subordinate meetings being then directed to deny the 
right of memhership to such as persisted in holding their 
fellow-men as property. Four years before this con- 
summation for which he had spent his life, John Wool- 
man had passed on to the unhampered life and work of 
a country where bond and free are equal. Deep hope- 
lessness came for a time on those who had worked with 
him, and who, as he passed from sight, murmured again 
the sad old words, "we thought this had been he who 
should have redeemed Israel." 

But the thread in this apostolical succession was not 
lost. If transmigration were an admittable theory, one 
might say that the soul of John Woolman sought some 
fitting medium to continue its work, and found lodg- 
ment in the baby that in December, 1771, opened its 
eyes on a world through which it journeyed with all the 
energy and purpose that had led the elder man — with all 
his sweetness too, but with a courageous cheer the frailer 
body had never known. For Isaac Hopper came of 
sturdy stock, and, though Quaker on one side of the 
house, did not become a member of the Society of 
Friends till he was twenty-two, and then through the 
preaching of William Savery and Mary Kidgeway, two 



350 A SYLVAN' CITY. 

Friends who were often heard in the Philadelphia meet- 
ings. Through William Savery's agency Elizabeth Fry 
turned to the work which he had prophesied would be 
hers, and which in later life became Isaac Hopper's 
also. Already the Pennsylvania Abolition Society had 
been formed, and in his early boyhood Isaac Hopper 
had had his first experience in aiding a fugitive slave to 
elude pursuit, and find quarters where none could mo- 
lest or make him afraid. Married in 1795 and settling 
permanently in Philadelphia, he became at once a lead- 
ing member of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, as 
well as one of the overseers of a school for colored chil- 
dren, a memorial of Anthony Benezet, a French 
Huguenot by birth, whose house remained standing on 
Chestnut street until 1840. Anthony is described as 
"a small, eager-faced man, full of zeal and activity, 
constantly engaged in works of benevolence, which were 
by no means confined to the blacks, and who was an 
untiring friend to the unhappy Acadians, many of 
whom were landed in Philadelphia by the ships which 
brought them from Nova Scotia." 

In this school, and in one founded later for colored 
adults, he taught two or three evenings each week for 
many years, and had become known throughout Phila- 
delphia as the friend and legal adviser of colored people 
under every emergency. From 1795 to 1829, when he 
removed to New York, each year held its record of 
courage and zeal in a work more and more necessary as 
time went on. Runaways were constantly passing 




LUCRETIA MOTT. 



EARL Y AB 0LITI0NI8T8. 353 

through the city, and the laws of that date were neither 
understood nor attended to. Wlienever a negro ar- 
rested as a fugitive slave was discharged for want of 
proof, no fee was paid ; but if the verdict made him a 
slave, and he was surrendered to his claimant, from 
five to twenty dollars were given to the magistrate. 
Katurally they made the most of any facts in favor of 
slavery, and thus there was never wanting opportunity 
for the efforts of men like Hopper, who took delight in 
suddenly confounding and upsetting the best-laid plans. 
A volume would be necessary for the stories which 
Father Hopper in later years told to all who questioned, 
and many of which were printed in the Anti- Slavery 
Standard and other organs of the society, a mine for all 
who would know the spirit and purpose of one of the 
most intense and persistent struggles ever made on 
American soil. Appeal was seldom resorted to, for 
Father Hopper's wit was as keen as his heart was big, 
and his personal presence so strong and impressive that 
even his enemies looked with an admiration they could 
not repress on the noble face and figure of this smiling 
marplot of all their schemes. With a sense of humor 
that seemed always to conflict slightly with his Quaker 
garb and principles, he had also the power of an indig- 
nation that could scorch and shrivel ; and like all men 
who have the courage of their convictions, made ene- 
mies, who in some cases, after a fury of opposition, 
turned about and became the strongest of friends. 
The yearly meetings of the Anti-Slavery Society 



354 A SYLVAN CITY. 

brought together a list of names each one representing 
individuaUties so marked and positive that only the 
fervor of a commoa purpose could have made working 
together practicable. In that early group women were 
as prominent as at a later day, and among them all 
none was more completely oblivious of self than Abi- 
gail Goodwin, who lived to see the last chain broken, 
after seventy-four years of unwearying effort. Her own 
clothes were patched and forlorn far be3^ond those of the 
average beggar, but worn with a calm unconsciousness 
of their extraordinary character ; and, indeed, few who 
looked on the earnest face, with its half-sad, half-humor- 
ous intensity, stopped to consider what garb was worn. 
She worked for the slave as a mother works for her own 
children, begging garments which she mended or made 
over indefatigably ; knitting bag after bag of stockings, 
and sitting up half the night to earn some petty sum 
turned over instantly to the society. She wrote for 
every anti-slavery journal, begged in every direction for 
money, implored friends to take stock in the Under- 
ground Railroad, and to the last day of her life burned 
with an actual passion of good-will ; and, it must be 
added, an equal inability to conceive that a slaveholder 
might also have some conception of justice and hu- 
manity. 

Her belief was shared by another woman, equally no- 
table and among the earliest organizers in such work — 
Esther Moore, the wife of Dr. Robert Moore. The pas- 
sage of the Fugitive Slave bill necessarily intensified 




J. MILLER m'KIM. 



EARL Y AB OLITIONISTS. 357 

all feeling and made dispassionate thought impossible, 
and though nearly eighty when this crowning iniquity 
became a portion of United States law, she worked 
against the results with the eagerness of her youth. For 
many years she had begged that special notification 
should be sent her of every fugitive who passed through 
Philadelphia, and during the whole time made it her 
business to supply to each one a gold dollar, the Society 
being barely able to defray their expenses on to the next 
station, with no provision for wants when the final one 
was reached. With larger personal means than Abigail 
Goodwin, she denied herself in all possible ways that the 
little coin might be always ready for the empty hand, 
and almost her last injunction was: " Write to Oliver 
Johnson, and tell him I die firm in the faith. Mind 
the slave !" 

" Mind the slave !" was the watchword for all. De- 
pression seems to have been unknown. In fact, there 
was no time for depression, for between the opposition, 
which is always a stimulant, and the actual work of pro- 
viding food, clothing and means for the throng of fugi- 
tives, there was unfailing and unceasing occupation for 
all. High-hearted courage and self-sacrifice inspired all 
alike, and the mere coming together of men and women 
animated by a profound conviction was in itself almost 
a Pentecost. 

In removing from Philadelphia Isaac Hopper's inter- 
est was in degree transferred to the New York societ}^, 
and the work he had done passed into the hands of 



358 A SYLVAIf CITY. 

Thomas Shipley, for many years President of the Penn- 
sylvania Abolition Society, of which he became an active 
member in 1817. Opposition made no impression upon 
him, and he devoted every energy of his powerful and 
judicial mind to defense not only of the principles he 
held, but of every one who needed their application, the 
thousands who followed him to his grave, in 1836, being 
the best witnesses of what his life had done for both black 
and white. Almost the same words might be said of 
Thomas Garrett, who, though living in Wilmington, 
was a familiar figure in every public meeting at Phila- 
delphia, and who, while as unobtrusive as Daniel Gib- 
bons, another of the earlier worthies, fought to the end 
with unceasing vigor, not only for the slave, but for 
every cause affecting the public good. To give the com- 
plete roll of these names, each one deserving full biog- 
raphy, is impossible in present limits," but there is ample 
material and opportunity for a series of lives, which, if 
properly given, should hold no less power and fascina- 
tion than those of Plutarch. 

As one by one the names on the society roll received 
the significant asterisk, new ones, to become no less 
honored and honorable, took their places. Popular feel- 
ing, which, contrary to received belief, is by no means 
always the voice of God, became more and more embit- 
tered against the movement. Riots had taken place 
not only in Boston and New York, but in the more law- 
abiding Philadelphia. Abolitionists were regarded as 
disturbers of, the public peace, interferers with private 




MARY GREW. 



EAUL T AB OLITIOmSTS. 361 

business and profit, and murmurs of indignation turned 
at last to veritable howls. The passage of the Fugitive 
Slave bill did more to intensify conviction on both sides 
and to precipitate the issue of ten years later than any 
act of the fifty years of steadily increasing oppression by 
which it had been preceded. Fanaticism had lessened 
and the society held names representing the broadest 
and deepest culture of the time, that of Dr. Furness 
holding a power hardly less than that of Dr. Channing. 
A man consecrated to the scholar's life, both by inheri- 
tance and personal tastes, he turned from " the still air 
of delightful studies " to a conflict, endurable only be- 
cause its failure or success meant the failure or success 
of every moral question. The men who banded to- 
gether in that pregnant ten years : Furness, Charles 
Cleveland, Miller McKim, Tappan, the Burleighs, Bir- 
ney, Peirce, and the "honorable women not a few," 
Lucretia Mott, Mary Grew, the Lewis sisters, did a 
work in which lay the seed of every reform we compla- 
cently regard as the effect of our republican institutions. 
There were years in which these much-vaunted institu- 
tions covered as absolute a despotism as that of Kussia, 
church and state uniting to preserve established order, 
and threatening with the terrors of the law any rash 
soul who questioned their justice. Such fate overtook 
Passmore Williamson, who accepted imprisonment as 
the price of free speech ; and who, though pelted with 
abuse as abductor, rioter and disturber of the public 
peace, left his prison with the knowledge that the 



362 A SYLVAW CITY, 

months, so far from being lost time, had worked for 
him beyond any power he alone could have ever had. 

Day by day stories more thrilling than any page has 
ever held were poured into the ears of the society. The 
Underground Railroad worked day and night transfer- 
ring fugitives, and covered its operations so perfectly 
that until the time came when the need for concealment 
ended no one outside the organization knew its officers 
or its methods. The full story has been told by WilUam 
Still in a book which ought to be far better known than 
it is, holding, as it does, the record of the Pliiladelphia 
branch of the road, and giving the results of all the 
years of organization. The incredible perils and hard- 
ships of the innumerable fugitives are only exceeded 
by the self-denying lives of the men and women who, 
for the sake of a principle, sacrificed ease and wealth 
and all personal ambition, and gave themselves and all 
they had to the work of redemption. ^No name in the 
long list shines with purer light than that of Lucretia 
Mott, who united absolute fidelity to every private re- 
sponsibility with a devotion to the highest public duties 
that has had hardly a parallel. Protestation was her 
birthright, for on the mother's side she was descended 
from old Peter Folger, also the ancestor of Franklin, 
who sent out from Nantucket, in 1676, a vigorous testi- 
mony to the need of religious toleration for all. His 
"A Looking-Glass for the Times" is "one long jet of 
manly, ungrammatical, valiant doggerel," and at the 
end, determined to evade no responsibility, he "wove 




GBACE ANNA L£WIS. 



EARL Y AB 0LITI0NI8T8. 365 

his name and his place of abode into the tissue of his 
verse," that all might know who he was and where he 
could be found if need arose. 

This blood, tempered by that of the Coffins and Macys, 
and subdued by generations of Quaker discipline, never 
lost a certain effervescing quality, and to the day of her 
death Lucretia Mott's lambent eyes were witness to 
the nature of the spirit that dwelt within. The "con- 
secration and the dream" were never divided. An 
almost perfect marriage — a life that dwelt in her home 
and children, yet opened wide to every noble thought 
and aim, assured her personal happiness and made in- 
evitable trials light. She could denounce, but her mind 
was judicial, and she saw always both sides of a ques- 
tion, presenting them with a candor that at times 
enraged the more narrow and prejudiced members. Her 
life is still to be written, but in the long line of Phila- 
delphia Abolitionists no name can ever hold more honor 
or dearer remembrance. The old days are past and the 
generation that knew them is passing too. They die, 
but their work is immortal, and whether forgotten or 
remembered, without it the republic would have been a 
failure and social progress a vain dream. 



MEDICAL EDUCATION. 



The student who takes his place to-day in the amphi- 
theatre of the University Hospital and watches the 
stages of some critical and delicate operation, or who 
finds the dissecting-room lighted and his " subject " 
made, by modern applications of science, as little offen- 
sive as possible, has small conception of the difficulties 
that even fifty years ago made medical study something 
to be snatched at in secret. The traditions of the past 
hedged about every practitioner and barred the way to 
investigation for every student. The physician of the 
past held the same relation to the general public that 
the " medicine-man " of the present does to the circle of 
believers who watch his movements with an awed con- 
viction that his power comes straight from another 
world. To them the black art and medicine are synony- 
mous, and for all rude communities this is more or less 
the accepted view. Religious rites are an essential part 
of the medical system for the savage, and this theory 
has been perpetuated by the fact that the clergy were 
also the physicians of the early colonists, and that pill 
and powder had an added unction and efficacy when 
administered by holy hands. Each step toward any real 
scientific basis has been hampered by such traditions 

867 



868 A SYLVAN CITY. 

and by the credulity and stupidity of the present, and 
even now the most distinguished scholars in the pro- 
fession admit that medicine cannot yet be called an 
exact science. 

In such admission is its surest hope for the future, 
and the eager experimenters who, at all the great cen- 
tres of the civilized world, are searchins; into the secrets 
of life and of disease, are building up a system which 
has truer foundation than any laid since the story of 
disease and death began for the world. 

In such researches Philadelphia has in many points 
led the way for American students. In Boston the 
chief physician for a time was also a Presbyterian min- 
ister, the Kev. Thomas Thatcher, who in 1677 pub- 
lished the first medical treatise written in this country, 
"A Brief Guide to the Small-Pox and Measles." 
Guides, whether brief or otherwise, were sadly needed, 
both of these diseases again and again decimating both 
colonists and Indians, while it raged among the pas- 
sengers of the Welcome^ from which Penn and his com- 
panions landed just two hundred years ago. Twa 
trained physicians, Thomas Wynne and Griffith Owen, 
were with him, and found ample occupation for years in 
fighting not only small-pox and measles, but yellow 
fever, "American distemper " and the various fevers 
and acute diseases consequent upon the hardships and 
irregularities of life in a new country. The common 
people followed Indian prescriptions, using golden-rod 






^-^ 




OLD MEDICAL HALL, UNIVERSITY ui PENNSYLVANIA.. 



MEDICAL EDUCATION. 371 

for dysentery, boneset for agues and consumption, and 
alder-buds and dittany for the blood. Herbs and roots, 
if they did not cure at least did not kill, and their reign 
was infinitely better than that of the patent medicine of 
to-day. 

When fifty years or more had passed, the corps of 
physicians from abroad began to be replaced by a gen- 
eration born on American soil. The pioneers had been 
English and had studied in London or Edinburg or 
Leyden, as the case might be. Dr. John Kearsley and 
Dr. Thomas Graeme were as popular as Wynne and 
Owen, and even more public spirited, Dr. Kearsley hav- 
ing been a member of the Assembly, and was often, 
after a telling speech, borne home on the shoulders of 
the people. John Kearsley, Jr., in time filled his place 
with almost equal efficiency, forming one of a brilliant 
and memorable group — Lloyd Zachary, Thomas Cad- 
wallader, William Shippen, Sr., Thomas and Phineas 
Bond, John Redman, John Bard. These men encour- 
aged students and gave the most thorough medical edu- 
cation possible at a time when neither colleges, nor 
hospitals, nor dissecting-rooms were in existence, but 
the majority were forced to complete their studies 
abroad. Two of these students. Dr. William Shippen 
and Dr. John Morgan, both natives of Philadelphia and 
both educated abroad, saw the absolute necessity for 
better means of study at home, and began in 1762 a 
course of lectures on anatomy and midwifery accompa- 
nied by dissections, before a class of ten students, the 



373 . A SYLVAN CITY. 

first systematic courses ever delivered in America, save 
those given by Dr. Hunter, at Newport, in 1756. 

Dr. Morgan gained notoriety in an unexpected direc- 
tion, being the first man in Philadelphia to carry a silk 
umbrella. Dr. Chanceller and the energetic Tory, Par- 
son Duclie, afterward kept him company, and, though 
at first every one sneered at them as effeminate and full 
of airs, they won the day in the end. Dr. Morgan also 
refused to compound or carry his own medicines, and 
sent to the apothecary for them, an innovation even 
more startling and provoking more opposition than the 
umbrella. It may be judged that he was a gentleman 
with very decided opinions and no hesitation in their 
expression, and these characteristics were essential to 
any success in the new movement. 

Dr. Cadwallader's lectures given in 1750, after his re- 
turn from the London schools, had been of little effect 
from being unaccompanied by demonstrations, but Dr. 
Shippen's marked the beginning of a new era, and the 
announcement of them may still be seen in the Pennsyl- 
vania Gazette for November 25, 1762 : 

"Dr. Shippen's Anatomical Lectures will begin to-mor- 
row evening at six o'clock, in his father's house, in Fourth 
Street. Tickets for the course to be had of the Doctor at 
five Pistoles each, and any gentlemen who incline to see 
•the subject prepared for the lectures and learn the art of 
Dissecting, Injections, &c., are to pay five Pistoles more." 

Looking at this with modern eyes, it seems a straight- 
forward and business-like announcement of some very 
essential work, but the people of Philadelphia in 1762 



MEDICAL EDUCATION. 373 

took a very different view. The anatomist pursued his 
investigations at the risk of his hfe. Mobbing was 
talked of and feared, and the quiet house on North 
Fourth street, then some distance out of town, was 
looked upon as the haunt of body-snatchers and the 
favorite abiding place of ghosts. A long back yard led to 
an alley, and here the students stole in and out, shrouded 
in their long cloaks, and not daring to enter till dark- 
ness had settled down. With the more sensible citizens 
the agitation soon passed, but the prejudice lingered, 
traces of it being perceptible even to this day. 

Until within a few years a lonely building by the stone 
bridge over the Cohocksink, on Korth Third street, was 
considered a receptacle for dead bodies brought there by 
the dreaded body-snatchers, "where their flesh was 
boiled and their bones burnt down for the use of the 
faculty ;" and as "I^o Admittance " was on the door, 
and once a fortnight saw volumes of noisome and 
penetrating black smoke issuing from the chimneys, 
why should any one care to admit that it was simply a 
place for boiling oil and making hartshorn ? Certainly 
not the boys, who went as near as they dared, and re- 
treated suddenly, singing : 

" The body-snatchers ! they have come, 

And made a snatch at me ; 
It 's very hard them kind of men 

"Won't let a body be ! 
Don't go to weep upon my grave, 

And think that there I '11 be ; 
They haven't left an atom there 

Of my anatomy." 



374 A SYLVAN CITY. 

Three years after Dr. Shippen's course had been es- 
tabUshed Dr. Morgan joined him, but their united energy 
would have failed had not Franklin, alive to the deep 
importance of the subject, used all his influence to es- 
tablish something permanent and befitting the needs of 
a growing city. "The College of Philadelphia" had 
been founded by Franklin and others in 1749, and char- 
tered by Thomas and Richard Penn, but it was not until 
May 3, 1765, that the board of trustees of this institu- 
tion unanimously elected Dr. Morgan Professor of the 
Theory and Practice of Physic, thereby creating the 
first medical professorship in America. A few months 
later, Dr. Shippen was elected Professor of Anatomy 
and Surgery. 

The foundation for good work had already been laid, 
not only in the courses of lectures already given, but in 
the organization of a hospital. As usual, Franklin's 
energy was the moving power, his great popularity se- 
curing public contribution, though the needs of the sick 
and wounded in the growing colony had long been re- 
cognized by the physicians into whose hands they came. 
No class of men in the community do as much gratui- 
tous work — not only gratuitous, but unrecognized — and 
there is therefore no cause for wonder that their action 
in the beginning of the undertaking held the same spirit 
which still rules all true members of the profession. 

' ' At the time of the incorporation of this charitable in- 
stitution (the Pennsylvania Hospital), when, on an appeal 
for assistance being made to the Provincial Assembly, one 




UNITERSITY HOSPITAL. 



3fEDICAL EDUCATION. 377 

of the objections offered to the measure was that the cost 
of medical attendance would alone be sufficient to con- 
sume all the money that could be raised, it was met by the 
offer of Dr. Zachary and the Bonds to attend the patients 
gratuitously for three years. This became the settled un- 
derstanding with the Board of Physicians and Surgeons, 
nor have we learned that the compact has ever been an- 
nulled or abrogated during the period of one hundred and 
thirty-one years (from 1751 to the present date), an in- 
stance of disinterested philanthropy which has been gene- 
rally followed in the charitable institutions depending on 
medical attendance, not only of this city, but throughout 
the length and breadth of the land."^ 

The necessity for a library was at once apparent, and 
partly through private, partly public contribution, it 
was founded one hundred and nineteen years ago. At 
present it contains nearly thirteen thousand volumes, 
accessible, under the necessary regulations, to all stu- 
dents and physicians. 

Here, as in the United Kingdom, two medical degrees 
were to be conferred — the Bachelor's and the Doctor's. 
For the former degree it was necessary that the candi- 
date should exhibit a sufficient acquaintance with the 
Latin tongue and with mathematics and philosophy ; he 
must have a general knowledge of pharmacy, and have 
been apprenticed to a reputable practitioner in physic. 
He w^as obliged also to attend one course of clinical and 
one of didactic lectures, as well as the practice of the 
Pennsylvania Hospital for one year. After being pri- 

* A History of the Medical Department of the Univer- 
sity OF Pennsylvania. By tlie late Joseph Carsou, M. D. Phila- 
delphia, 1869. 



378 A SYLVAN CITY. 

vately examined by the faculty, he was then submitted 
to a pubUc examination by the medical trustees and pro- 
fessors and such professors and trustees in other depart- 
ments as chose to attend. To obtain the Doctor's degree 
it was requisite that three years should have passed since 
the conferring of the Bachelor's degree ; that the candi- 
date should be full twenty-four years old, and that he 
should write and publicly defend a thesis in the college. 

A separate chair of Materia Medica and Botany was 
created in 1768, to which Dr. Adam Kuhn, who had 
studied these branches in Sweden under Linnoeus, was 
at once elected, holding the position until he assumed 
the Chair of Practice, a period of twenty-one years. 

Commencement, however indifferently it may be re- 
garded by the outer world, is a season of profound ex- 
citement to those more closely concerned ; but that of 
June 1st, 1768, held a deep significance to every citizen 
who watched the course of progress for the colony. In 
the old minutes of the board of trustees may still be read 
the stately paragraphs in which this " Birthday of Medi- 
cal Honors in America " is described in full, and we can 
see the imposing procession of "the several Professors 
and Medical Candidates in their proper Habits proceed- 
ing from the Apparatus-Koom to the Public Hall, where 
a polite assembly of their fellow-citizens were convened 
to honor the Solemnity." 

" Solemnity " it undoubtedly was, for what hopes and 
fears had not entered into this three years of laborious 
experiment ? The Provost gave voice to the magnitude 



MEDICAL EDUCATION. 379 

of the occasion in sonorous Latin, and an oration in the 
same tongue followed, lightness and grace being given 
to the rather ponderous ceremonies by the first public 
discussion : " A Dispute Whether the Retina or Tunica 
Choroide be the Immediate Seat of Vision ? The argu- 
ment for the retina was ingeniously maintained by Mr. 
Cowell ; the opposite side of the question was supported 
with great acuteness by Mr. Fullerton, who contended 
that the retina is incapable of the office ascribed to it, 
on account of its being easily permeable to the rays of 
light, and that the choroid coat, by its being opaque, is 
the proper part for stopping the rays and receiving the 
picture of the object." 

Ten graduates received the degree of Bachelor of 
Medicine, not a name among them having failed to win 
honor in the after career, and several of them trans- 
mitting both honor and the same ability to descendants 
who are in active life to-day. 

King's College, in New York, w^hich had in 1769 
given the degree of B. M. , followed in the ensuing year 
with that of M. D., this honor not being conferred by 
the Philadelphia college till 1771 ; and thus, though 
Philadelphia led the way in the award of any medical 
degree, New York can, of course, claim priority in 
having given the doctorate. 

No chair of Chemistry had at first been founded, but 
one of the most brilliant students Philadelphia has ever 
known made the new chair a matter of course. Though 
but twenty -four when he received the appointment. Dr. 



380 A SYLVA]V CITY. 

Benjamin Rush was widely known, not only as chemist, 
but from the notes made by him in his seventeenth year 
on the yellow fever of 1762 — the only record of that epi- 
demic in existence. He brought with him from London, 
where he spent some time after his graduation at the 
Edinburg School, a chemical apparatus presented by 
Thomas Penn, the only member of the Penn family who 
had any interest in the intellectual progress of the city 
they still counted as theirs. Probably so juvenile a 
faculty has never before or since met within the walls of 
any college. Rush was but twenty-four ; Kuhn, twent}^- 
eight ; Shippen, thirty-three, and Morgan, the patriarch 
of the assembly, thirty-four. 

" The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts," 
and these boyish professors, planning far beyond any 
present possibility, lived to see their dearest wishes 
fulfilled, and the college, to which the vigor and best 
energy of their early manhood had been given, unrivaled 
in its accomplishment, and sought by students from 
every state in the Union. 

The war of the Revolution proved a serious check to 
the steady growth of the school. During the occupa- 
tion of the city by the British all instruction was sus- 
pended, and some of the professors took their places as 
medical officers in the army. In 1779 the college charter 
was abrogated, its officers removed and its property 
transferred to a new organization, the " University of 
the State of Pennsylvania," which received much more 
extended educational privileges and larger endowment. 




,(Kitttiiiimiii"9 



HAHNEMANN COLLEGE IN 1883. 



MEDICAL EDUCATION. 383 

For twelve years the two schools gave independent 
courses of instruction, but at the end of that time they 
agreed to sink differences and unite. At the same time, 
following the precedent of the University of Edinburg, 
the degree of B. M. was dropped and the time of study 
limited to two courses in the institution, and three years' 
pupilage under some respectable practitioner. 

Up to 1810, Obstetrics had no chair, but was taught 
in connection with anatomy. Dr. T. C. James was its 
first regular professor. Another novelty came in at the 
same time, being applied to the preliminary examina- 
tion of the student, which took place through a screen, 
only the dean knowing the applicant's name. This 
structure, known as "The Green Box," and looked 
upon with much the same terror as that inspired by 
a hidden corner in the Inquisition, was maintained for 
ten years, and the name still clings to the dreaded 
ordeal. Public examination also has been abolished, 
and the student is now examined in private by each 
professor. 

An auxiliary faculty of five chairs was added in 1865 ; 
Zoology and Comparative Anatomy, Botany, Hygiene, 
Mineralogy and Geology, Medical Jurisprudence and 
Toxicology — lectures on these courses being given three 
times a week in April, May and June. 

A building which became known as Surgeons' Hall, 
on Fifth street below Library, was the first one erected 
specially for the school, and was used until 1800, when 
a house on Ninth street, between Market and Chestnut, 



384 A SYLVAN CITY. 

was bought, which had been built as a mansion for the 
use of the President of the United States, the corner- 
stone bearing the inscription : 

" THIS CORNER-STONE WAS LAID 

ON THE 10th day OF MAY, 1792. 

THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA OUT OF DEBT. 

THOMAS MIFFLIN, GOVERNOR." 

Three generations came and went before new and larger 
quarters were found, with ample space for any future 
growth. 

At Thirty-sixth street and the old Darby road, made 
now by corporation stupidity into Woodland avenue, a 
name as meaningless as the old one was suggestive, 
stands a group of the most beautiful buildings in the 
city — the medical hall and laboratory, with the hospital 
at the back. The medical hall is the largest building of 
its kind in the United States, containing the museum, 
library, private rooms of the professors and the laborato- 
ries of physiology, experimental therapeutics, histology 
and pathology, as well as the various lecture-rooms. 
An area of over seven thousand square feet is covered 
by the adjacent buildings, which includes the two labora- 
tories of chemistry, the dissecting room, and on the 
ground floor the dental operating room. Each of these 
occupies an entire story, while separated only by a street 
is the University Hospital, with its dispensaries ; and 
one square away the Philadelphia Hospital, with its 
thousand beds. 

No more beautiful group of buildings is to be found 
in the United States. The sreat trefes of Harvard and 



MEDICAL EDUCATION. 385 

Yale are lacking, and the few set out here and there 
seem to find the struggle for mere life hard enough to 
prevent any attempt at growth. But velvety turf slopes 
away on the eastern side almost to the busy river. The 
city lies beyond, its many spires clear against the sky, 
and the student will hardly find an alma mater more 
worthy of honor or remembrance. 

Up to 1879 the course of study was not especially rigid 
in its demands, and as rumored lack of thoroughness 
existed, the graded course was instituted, and attend- 
ance upon three winter sessions made imperative if a 
diploma was to be secured. Recently an exceedingly 
thorough (optional) medical course of four years has 
been organized, meeting with considerable success, 
while an entrance examination upon the main branches 
of a sound general education has also been added. De- 
tails of methods adopted are full of interest, but have 
no room in this sketch of the general system. It is suf- 
ficient to say of this parent school of American medi- 
cine, that it has always held fast to that which was 
good ; has stood ready and eager to respond to the de- 
mand for higher medical education, and that, while 
always conservative, it represents a conservatism which 
has ever been both enlightened and generous. 

The Jefferson Medical College, of Philadelphia, char- 
tered April 7, 1825, began as a branch of the Jefiferson 
College, of Cannonsburg ; but became, thirteen years 
later, a distinct corporation. Its first teachings were 



386 A SYLVAN CITY. 

given at 518 Prune, now Locust street, in very humble 
quarters, the building standing beside what was then 
the Potters' Field, now Washington Square, the old 
Walnut Street Prison still further darkening its out- 
look — a small beginning for a school which now ranks 
as one of the most successful in the country^ and which 
contended from its inception against deep-seated preju- 
dice and opposition. Time has proved that the found- 
ing of a second school, so far from injuring the first, 
has, by the competition thus introduced, largely aided 
in giving to Philadelphia its reputation as a great cen- 
tre of medical education. 

The first sixteen years of the life of " Old Jefi','' as it 
is affectionately called by its alumni, were disturbed by 
public opposition, internal dissension and frequent 
change in office. The faculty had organized with Dr. 
George McClellan, the founder and ruling spirit, and 
Drs. John Eberle, Jacob Green, William P. C. Barton, 
Benjamin Rush Rhees, John Barnes and Nathan R. 
Smith, Dean ; but one chair alone had eight incumbents 
during the period mentioned, and uncertainty was the 
only certain thing about the new venture. With 1841 
and the resignation of Dr. McClellan, came a " reor- 
ganization," and the assured financial success of this 
alma "tnater of some of our most eminent practitioners, 
the new faculty having been headed by Dunglison and 
represented by Mitchell, Mutter, Meigs, Baclie and 
Pancoast. 

The catalogue for the session 1828-29, announced that 



MEDICAL EDUCATION. 387 

''The present session of the lectures is held in the very 
elegant and appropriately furnished new building in 
Tenth street," and there the college remains to the pre- 
sent day. The building has been lately remodeled, and 
the city has lost the picturesque Grecian front, but 
much space has been gained by the change. The new 
building contains two large lecture rooms, each capable 
of seating over six hundred students, and well-appointed 
laboratories of chemistry, experimental therapeutics, 
pathological histology and of physiology. In the last 
named are given demonstrations of the principal facts 
in experimental physiology and histology. A valuable 
and rapidly growing museum is in the same building, 
and the dissecting rooms are large and convenient, 
being open from October to the middle of June. West 
of the main building lies the Jefferson College Hospital, 
separated from it by only a narrow passage-way. Five 
stories high and one hundred and seven feet square, it 
is so planned as to easily accommodate one hundred 
and twenty-five patients, and at the same time give 
ample space for both the dispensary department and for 
the ampliitheatre, where daily clinics are held. In the 
past year it is stated that over one thousand surgical 
operations liaA^e been here performed. Two resident 
physicians, as well as several clinical assistants in 
the dispensary, are appointed annually from the most 
recent graduates of the college. 

The system of instruction is still that which has long 
been popular throughout this country — a non-graded 



388 A SYLVAIi CITY. 

course of two winter sessions, each of nearly six months' 
duration. An optional three years' course has lately 
been introduced, with encouraging results, but no en- 
trance examination is required. Lectures from eight 
chairs are given, and, in addition to the demonstrations 
previously mentioned, there is required practical work in 
the chemical laboratory, while the graduating class, in 
sections of convenient size, practice in minor and ope- 
rative surgery and bandaging, besides instruction in 
physical diagnosis. A spring course of lectures on spe- 
cial subjects is given, lasting nearly two months, and a 
preliminary course of three weeks in the fall. 

Active discussion still goes on as to the merits and 
demerits of a non-graded course, but no student will 
deny the difficulty of obtaining any satisfactory grasp of 
diagnosis, therapeutics and surgery with at most only a 
partial knowledge of anatomy and physiology. Undoubt- 
edly able physicians are graduated upon the non-graded 
plan, for there is scarcely one of the prominent practi- 
tioners of this city whose studies were not pursued under 
this method. But it is an equally undoubted fact that 
the graduate whose studies have been followed in their 
logical sequence through a period of three years, equal 
ability being conceded, is better fitted in the end to enter 
upon the duties of his profession, and that both he and 
the public at large are the gainers by his increased ex- 
penditure of time and money. 

More than a decade has passed since an urgent appeal 
was made by Dr. Gross, one of the most honored names 




CLINIC HALL— woman's COLLEGE. 



MEDICAL EDUCATION. 391 

in medical science, for a higher standard of education, 

in an address given before the akimni association of this 

college, at its first anniversay, March 11th, 1871, in which 

he says : 

"The time of study should be increased to four years, 
embracing four courses of lectures of nine months each. 
The examinations for the degree of Doctor of Medicine 
should be conducted by a separate board, one entirely in- 
dependent of the school in which the student has attended 
lectures. A higher standard of preliminary education 
should be demanded, and no applicant should be admitted 
unless he is a man of high culture and refinement ; or, 
in other words, a thorough gentleman, ambitious to uphold 
the honor and dignity of the profession." 

Thorough knowledge and training are certainly at the 
command of every student who chooses Philadelphia as 
his working ground, for within the limits of the city are 
thirteen general hospitals and fourteen for the treatment 
of special classes of diseases and injuries. In addition 
to these are four hospitals for lying-in and the diseases 
of women, and two for the diseases of children, with 
eight general and six special dispensaries. Valuable 
free clinical lectures are given in many of these institu- 
tions, and nearly all are accessible to the energetic 
student. 

The mere mention of the Woman's Medical Collesre 
recalls the absolute fury of opposition encountered, not 
only here, but at any point where the medical education 
of women was suggested. The pioneers in the new 
departure have lived to see many dreams fulfilled. The 
movement has had the usual course, the story of any un- 



392 A SYLVAN CITY. 

familiar truth, scientific or otherwise, having been from 
the foundation of the world the same. A^iolent opposi- 
tion, often ending in death for the propounders of the 
obnoxious fact ; an intermediate stage of partial assent ; 
a final one in which the thing suddenly becomes a part 
of the established order of the universe, and it is denied 
that anybody ever thought of denying. We have not 
gone as far as the little boy who was born and reared in 
a woman's hospital among women physicians. He 
stood by a mantel in a friend's house, looking at a plas- 
ter group representing a doctor and his patient. After 
examining the doctor with a puzzled air, he turned to 
hi$ mother, with a look of scornful astonishment, ex- 
claiming: ''Why, mother! it's a man !" 

The educational bias in this case was a trifle one- 
sided, though perhaps none too much so when the 
weight of all opposing generations is taken into account. 

The Woman's Medical College of Pennsvlvania was 
incorporated by the State Legislature on the 11th of 
March, 1850, under the name of "The Female Medical 
College of Pennsylvania," and is the first institution 
ever chartered to grant to women the title of M.D. The 
first corporators of the college were William J. Mullen, 
Dr. Frederick A. Fickhardt, Dr. Henry Gibbons, Fer- 
dinand J. Dreer, Dr. William J. Birkcy, R. P. Kane 
and John Longstreth. 

The college was opened for instruction the 2d of Octo- 
ber, 1850, and its first commencement was held at the 
Musical Fund Hall , December 30th, 1851. From that 



MEDICAL EDUCATION. 393 

day to this the friends of the institution have labored 
for its success with an energy and zeal that are rare ex- 
cept in the annals of the oppressed. It suffered both 
from the apathy and the ridicule of the general public 
and the distrust of the profession at large, and, within its 
walls, from attempts to introduce heterodox teachings 
and from great poverty. One by one, through the un- 
flagging and disinterested labors of the faculty and cor- 
porators, these obstacles have been surmounted. While 
the college lacked money, its courses of instruction were 
given in a most unpretending building in the rear of 
229 Arch .street. When contributions from generous 
friends were received — and in its early years the school 
was far from self-supporting — they were applied only to 
immediate practical needs ; and thus, though the insti- 
tution has felt poverty, it has never been burdened by 
debt. Its place is made, and to-day the Woman's 
Medical College and its hospital number among their 
lecturers and consultants some of the most prominent 
representatives of medical teaching in Philadelphia. 

In 1868 the college received a large bequest through 
the will of the late Isaac Barton, by the aid of which 
the present building, on the corner of North College 
avenue and Twenty-first street, was erected. The cor- 
ner-stone was laid October 1, 1874, by T. Morris Perot, 
" in the name of Woman and for Her Advancement in 
the Science and Practice of Medicine." 

The college is a handsome four-story brick building 
with a frontage of nearly two hundred feet. Much care 



394 A SYLVAN CITY. 

was exercised in making its arrangements subservient 
to its special end, and nmnerous peculiarities, such as 
placing the lecture-rooms upon one floor, the easy stairs, 
the cloak-room and toilet arrangements, and the care- 
fully screened windows, mark it as a building expressly 
adapted for the use of women. This college was the first 
•to introduce the optional three years' course, and has 
since made the attendance upon three graded winter 
sessions a requisite for graduation. The order of lec- 
tures and examinations and the conditions of gradua- 
tion are practically the same as those in the University 
of Pennsylvania, except that there are preliminary ex- 
aminations in chemistry, anatomy and physiology at 
the end of the first session and that there is at present 
no entrance examination. A weekly "quiz " upon each 
branch taught forms a part of the regular instruction 
and is free to every student. In addition to the didactic 
instruction, there are well-stocked laboratories of chem- 
istry, physiology, pathology, histology and pharmacy, in 
each of which practical work is required. An impor- 
tant extension of the session is found in the spring term, 
which, as the list shows, is attended by about seventy- 
five per cent of the entire number of students registered, 
and which is nearly equally divided between laboratory 
work, lectures, and instruction. 

In view of the fact that the practice of the graduates 
of this school is almost exclusively confined to female 
patients and children, its clinical facilities are excep- 
tionally good. The Woman's Hospital, where over 



MEDICAL EDUCATION. 395 

four thousand patients are annually treated, is in the 
immediate neighborhood of the college, and its dispen- 
sary service and free bedside instruction are daily open 
to the advanced student. Several clinics weekly are 
held here by members of the staff; and clinical instruc- 
tion in the Philadelphia, Wills and Orthopoedic Hospi- 
tals, as well as in the Philadelphia Lying-in Charity, is 
easily accessible. Four graduates are annually ap- 
pointed assistants to the resident physician in the "Wo- 
man's Hospital, and the large out-practice of this 
institution is mainly under their charge. 

Xo notice of this school would be complete without 
the mention of two physicians, to whom it owes much 
of its present reputation. I refer to Mrs. E. H. Cleve- 
land and Ann Preston, both deceased. To very many 
Philadelphians their names are synonyms for profes- 
sional thoroughness and zeal, and their lives give con- 
clusive proof that there is no necessary incompatibility 
between the trained perceptions of the physician and 
surgeon and of all womanly gentleness and grace. 

A homoeopathic medical school, the Hahnemann Medi- 
cal College, is also located in this city, and bears the 
highest reputation among institutions of its class. 

In this paper reference to medical teachers now in 
active hfe has been purposely avoided. For the facts 
embodied, and for much valuable information which 
might readily have escaped an unprofessional observer, 
the author is indebted to Dr. jS". A. llandolph, of the 
University of Pennsylvania. 



THE BETTERING-HOUSE 

AND 

OTHER CHARITIES. 



AccORDiisrG to the old geographies, Philadelphia used 
to be noted for "her markets, her clean streets and her 
charities." The markets still sustain their reputation, 
and let a Philadelphian go where he must when he dies, 
lie wishes to go home for his dinner. The streets speak 
for themselves, and what they say in dirt and cobble- 
stones is plain to every one ; but only the tax-payer 
knows what it costs to keep them smelling so badly and 
so out of repair. 

The old geographies, howiever, knew little of the chari- 
ties of the cit}^ as they now exist. The Philadelphian is 
fond of classification and organization. If he has any- 
thing to do, he likes to make a little society for that spe- 
cific purpose, and to have the proper officers and a 
suitable number of members. After the organization is 
completed, a constitution adopted and printed in a neat 
little pamphlet, he is ready to go to work. In this way he 
multiplies societies for charitable as for all other pur- 
poses. Por each misery and each misfortune the city has 
its separate relief. It has a home for old men and 
another for old women, and another still for married old 

397 



398 A SYLVAN CITY. 

men and women, and will yet, perhaps, discriminate be- 
tween the old man who is a bachelor and the one who is 
a widower. The woman who has a baby to take care of 
does not go to the refuge intended for the one whose 
child has reached the traveler's majority of four years ; 
and if she has no child at all, she repairs to a third re- 
lief fund. There is a legacy left to the city for the 
purchase of wood for widows, and — as if to prove that 
no misfortune is without compensation — preference is 
given to those whose poverty is due to dissolute hus- 
bands. The applicant must herself be sober and honest, 
but the less her departed lord shared in these virtues the 
better for her. The testator who made this provision 
went still further. Supposing in his innocence that the 
number of candidates properly qualified might some time 
fail, and so leave a balance unprovided for, he ordered 
that whatever was left should be spent in warm clothing 
for the " oldest and barest " discharged from the hospi- 
tal and " Bettering-House," evidently having great com- 
passion for the wrecks in life. For the opposite class — 
the people who mean to help themselves — Benjamin 
Franklin and John Scott, of Edinburg, made provision. 
Each of these energetic men left $5000 for a fund to be 
used in loans to young married artificers who were 
qualified for acceptance by certain conditions. 

On the twenty-third of February the city keeps the 
birthday of John Scott by giving twelve dollars' worth 
of bread to the needy, but never more than two loaves 
to one family. 



I 




PENNSYLVANIA HOSPITAL WITHIN THE GATES. 



THE BETTERmO-HOUSE. 401 

This minute classification makes relief easy for those 
who have mastered the art of dividing goats and sheep 
at a glance, but it complicates the work of the histo- 
rian. Who can tell the story of the charities of any 
great city, and who can do justice to the energy and 
the goodness that originates and keeps them all at 
work ? 

The founders of Philadelphia made no provision for 
such a host of charities. They fancied that in such a 
fair and fertile land no one need suffer who could work, 
and there would always be help for the sick and aged, 
and support for the young. Emigrants themselves, 
they did not foresee what emigration was to mean in 
after days, and certainly no one of them expected pau- 
pers to come of their own line. 

Still it was not very long before organized help was 
needed, but it came in a shape that tells what Old 
Philadelphia meant by '' charity." An ancient Quaker 
tailor, John Martin, dying in 1702, twenty years after 
the city was founded, left a lot of ground between Third 
and Fourth and Spruce and Walnut Streets, to three of 
his friends. He said nothing in his will of the purpose 
to which it was to be devoted, but his honest old cronies 
evidently understood, and they at once built a long, 
quaint house on the Walnut Street front, opening south- 
ward, however, on the green field. The Monthly Meet- 
ing took charge of the place, and here sent certain of 
the poorer members who needed help. After a time 
they built little one-storied cottages, with a garret in 



403 A SYLVAN CITY. 

each steep roof, and with a great chimiie}" outside. 
These were ranged in order on either side of a green 
lane ; each had its little garden, and here bloomed fruit, 
trees and flowers. None of the people who lived 
here were paupers. Some had a little money, and all 
worked who could. Two or three old women had little 
schools, and another — because of the natural law that 
forces a river to run by a city, and builds a school near 
a confectioner — made molasses candy. A watchmaker 
hung some forlorn old turnip time-pieces in one of the 
Walnut Street windows, and the herbs raised in the 
gardens had a virtue peculiar to themselves. 

As the city grew around them this small village be- 
came greener and sweeter. Little by little high brick 
houses arose around it ; the streets leading thither were 
all paved, and the city beat about it as an ocean about 
a lagoon. The only entrance was now up a little alley- 
way, and he who strayed in there unknowing what he 
would find must have rubbed his eyes and fancied him- 
self bewitched. He came out of noise and traffic, from 
bustle and business, and suddenly everything was still ; 
the air was filled with the perfume of roses, bees were 
humming, old men were sitting smoking their pipes 
under grape arbors, and old Quaker ladies were bending 
over beds of sweet marjoram and lavender. To awake 
and find one's self at the gates of Damascus was com- 
monplace to this. 

If the stranger was fond of Longfellow he stood still, 
and he smiled, because he knew the place at once, and 
he would gently murmur : 



THE BETTERING-HOUSE. 403 

"Then in the suburbs it stood, in the midst of meadows 

and woodlands ; 
NoiD the city surrounds it ; but still with its gateway and 

wicket. 
Meek in the midst of splendor, its humble walls seem to 

echo 
Softly the words of the Lord, ' The poor ye have always 

with you.' " 

Then would one of these peaceful old men arise, and 
he too would smile, because he too knew, and he would 
show the stranger the little vine-covered house to which 
Gabriel was taken, and then the place where he was 
buried. " It was all true," he said, " and Henry Long- 
fellow did but put it into verse." The stranger found 
it good to be there. Fcav pilgrimages rewarded so well, 
because this asked nothing of imagination ; and before 
he left he took an ivy leaf from the house — he bought 
rosemary for a remembrance. If he was an artist he 
made a sketch of the place, and if he was a writer he 
published a description of it. 

Every one who knew " Evangeline " knew of the 
"Old Quaker Almshouse" in Philadelphia, and the 
story not only gave the inmates a certain importance in 
their own and others' eyes, but it added many a thrifty 
penny to their income. But what proof this pretty 
tale gave of an imaginative memory ! These clear-eyed 
old people knew perfectly well that a fever-stricken pa- 
tient never was and never would have been taken into 
their asylum. They knew Evangeline never crossed 
their little yard nor entered their wicket, and that there 



404 A SYLVAN CITY. 

was no grave sacred to the wanderer's memory in ilidr 
inclosure. They knew all about the ' ' Bettering-House, ' ' 
once up Spruce Street a few blocks away, and about the 
fever patients there, and the nuns who nursed them ; it 
had also once stood in the midst of meadows ; but when 
the pilgrims came looking for the true Mecca, behold 
it was all destroyed and built up as a city in bricks and 
cobble-stones ; and then the old Quakers, leaning over 
their wicket, beckoned the seekers away to a harmless 
delusion. 

If these thrifty people had only known it, nothing 
could have been more quaint than their own life, and, 
in a way, it had its own poetry, and needed little help 
from imagination. There was one woman who went in 
a child of eight and stayed until she died at eighty-four, 
and she must have known about as much of the world 
she left as could be revealed to an observant and caged 
canary. They had their ghost and their strange noises, 
and when the last house was torn down a skull was 
turned up from the mould, and that explained much, if 
it did not tell its own story. They had their traditions, 
and as house after house was taken away and the city 
steadily stole in, they told stories of the times when 
''Walnut Place " was in its glory, and had its aristoc- 
racy and a drab-colored brillianc}^ Then, at last, the 
one remaining house was torn down, the last rose-bush 
rooted up, and a few exiles, turning away, went into a 
greater solitude in going into the crowded, noisy town. 

This idea of a rural workhouse, which was not to be a 



THE BETTERmO-HOUSE. 407 

mere almshouse, runs through the early history of Phila- 
delphia. The people had no idea of maintaining pau- 
pers, and when they found it was a possibility they 
determined to make pauperism a disgrace. In 1718 the 
man who chose to exist on public charity had to also 
accept a penalty, and, with each member of his family, 
he was obliged to wear on his right sleeve a badge made 
of red or blue cloth, on which was a great ""P," and 
the initial letter of the district giving him relief. It 
was not pleasant to be a pauper in old Philadelphia. 
To be poor was another matter, and a man could keep 
his self-respect and his neighbors' esteem if he earned 
what he ate, but it required courage to take public alms. 
But plenty of the thriftless had this courage of their 
laziness, and there w^ere also sick people and helpless 
old men and women. Still the citizen was taken care 
of by his neighbors, and sick strangers were lodged 
in empty houses ; but as the population increased the 
almshouse was needed, and so in 1731 it was founded. 
A lot of ground between Spruce and Pine and Third 
and Fourth, just below the Quaker Almshouse, and in 
view of the new church of St. Peter's, on Society Hill, 
was chosen. On Spruce Street there was a gatewaj^, 
but whoever came over the meadow from Third went in 
by an X stile. Here were lodged the poor, the sick and 
the insane, and the common misfortune of poverty put 
them on an equality even of treatment. After a time 
it was seen that the sick must have separate accommo- 
dations, and the arrangements made for them — which 



408 A SYLVAN CITY. 

likely enough amounted to little more than a sick ward, 
taking in ''accidents," and under the charge of visiting 
physicians — have a historical interest, as they resulted 
in the founding of the first hospital in the colonies. It 
afterward was removed to High Street, near Fifth, and 
soon it appears to have ceased being a municipal charity. 
Then, as constantly happened with public institutions 
in those days, the Almshouse was no sooner well estab- 
lished than it had to be moved. Penn had a prophetic 
knowledge of the possible extent of his city, but as it 
grew the centre of business was necessarily constantly 
pushing westward, and also southward, and so all pri- 
vate and charitable interests had to yield and go still 
further out. The ground at Third and Pine became 
valuable, and the Almshouse had to go to the country. 
It was now under the charge of a private corporation 
" For the Relief and Employment of the Poor," and it 
bought a large tract of land on the same line between 
Spruce and Pine, but about Ninth. Here was a good 
orchard, fine forest trees, and plenty of ground for a 
small farm. They built a sufficiently commodious house 
in the midst of the meadows, over which ran narrow 
foot-paths, and the place had soon the air of a public 
institution. There was a steward and a matron, out- 
door agents and some resident physicians. It was really 
a great comfort to many of the appreciative people who 
liked a "Bettering-House" to justify its title, and so 
they crowded in, and had the best they could get. 
There was a main building and two wings. In the first. 



THE BETTEEING-HOUSE. 409 

there was on the lower floor the offices ; on the second 
the steward, or governor, and the doctors were accom- 
modated ; then on the next floor came the sick, and on 
tlie fourtli the insane, and next the roof anotlier class of 
sick. The paupers were in the wings — the women in 
one, the men in the other. The children were sent to 
the "Yellow Cottage," down in that part of the city 
known as "The Xeck." All seems to have gone 
smoothly until about the close of the Revolution, when 
the corporation failed, and that historical body, " The 
Guardians of the Poor," took its place, and entered 
upon its prerogative of making the pauper a stepping- 
stone to higher things for itself. 

From this time the charities of the city began to 
multiply. After the war there was an undercurrent of 
misery, sickness and poverty to be relieved. The old 
neighborhood feeling had disappeared in the changes 
and increase of population, and after 1800 the immigra- 
tion of people who had to be taken care of until they 
found occupation became a declared burden. People 
gave here and there, and all sorts of bequests were made 
to the public charities. Some testators provided for soup, 
and some for bread, but more for fuel. It became al- 
most as comfortable out of the " Bettering-House " as 
in it, if only the needy person was ingenious enough to 
hold the proper threads in his hand. His support was 
made easier by the division of the present city into 
districts. The pauper who preferred out-door relief to 
the conditions imposed at the "Bettering-House" got 



410 A SYLVAN CITY. 

his soup in the city and carried it home ; then he took 
a Uttle walk to Southwark and asked for his bread, or- 
dered his wood in the ]!^orthern Liberties, and probably 
had a coat or a wig given to him as he went home. The 
only difficulty he had arose from the constant increase 
in his class, so that by-and-by the beggars interfered 
with each other, and none of them liked it. Then there 
came another trouble. The mendicants began to educate 
their patrons, and this was a serious evil, and never in- 
tended by them. The people who gave found that no 
one seemed any better for it all. They themselves cer- 
tainly were not, because constant failures disheartened 
and irritated them. Give and do what they would, they 
never got the better of poverty, and their alms, their 
legacies, all seemed like dragon seed, and only brought 
forth a large and undesirable crop of greater evils. 
They were forever multiplying relief by beggars, and 
finding the result destitution. 

In 1831 came a hard, terrible winter of storms and 
bitter cold, and in 1832 the cholera. During these years 
the charitable had to work, and had to give, but they 
also thought. They were benevolent, but that did not 
also necessitate their being stupid ; and our mothers 
and fathers puzzled over evils which we have fancied 
peculiar to our own day, and decided upon the same 
remedies. 

There was one good woman, Mrs. Esther Moore, a 
Public Friend, who thought seriously on these matters. 
She remembered the days when each one knew his 



h^^ ^{\ 




THE BETTERING-H0U8E. 413 

neighbor's needs, and she felt that the thing to do was to 
restore neighborhood relations. The rich, she thought, 
ought to educate the poor, and teach them many things 
they did not know in the way of thrift, of industry, of 
cleanliness and independence. It was not always the 
fault of the poor when they were paupers, and she be- 
lieved in education as well as regeneration. 

Like most women, she did not theorize on the ques- 
tion that interested her, but began to experiment. She 
selected four blocks down town in a neighborhood 
where the classes were mixed, and she set to work 
to make the personal acquaintance of each one living 
there. Her next step was to make the poor known 
to the better off, and to persuade the latter to each 
take a certain number under their care. The poor 
were not only to be helped to work, but they were 
to be shown better and more thrifty ways. Their 
homes were to be made cleaner and more comfortable ; 
the children were to be sent to school. The real charity 
was to be given in constant influence and supervision. 
She persuaded women to help her and men to give her 
money ; and, by good fortune, just at that moment there 
came to Philadelphia a young man named David Nas- 
mith, who was from Glasgow, and full of Dr. Chalmers' 
plans for remedying pauperism. He had become so in- 
terested in these methods, and so fully persuaded that 
they embodied the only cure for dependent poverty, 
that he had given up his business and had set out to 
travel through the Christian world and preach this new 



414 A SYLVAN CITY. 

gospel of help. In Philadelphia there was no obstacle 
to immediate experiment, and he and Mrs. Moore fell 
into harness together with a hearty good will, and took 
the parts of Paul and Apollos with instant results. 
They called a meeting in a parlor, and seven were there, 
four men and three women. Then, in April, 1831, they 
resolved to call a public meeting at the Franklin Insti- 
tute and see what would come of it. 

What did come of it was " The Union Benevolent 
Association," which is still actively in the field, and as 
representative of the merits and also the failures in 
Philadelphia charities as any society could be. 

It was founded on Dr. Chalmers' plans, and has very 
much the same system as the younger " Society for Or- 
ganizing Charities." It recognizes neither color, nation 
nor sect. It has a board of managers, who are men, and 
a " Ladies' Branch," where are found the visitors and 
most active of the workers in the administration of 
charity. The city south of Girard Avenue and north of 
South Street, and from river to river, is divided into dis- 
tricts, each having its own officers and visitors — all wo- 
men. These report once a month to the ladies' board 
of managers, and this, in turn, to the men's. In the 
fifty-one years of its existence this Association has given 
over a million of dollars, a hundred thousand tons of 
coal and coke and a proportionate amount of clothing, ' 
food and every other kind of help. This record is the 
more remarkable because the Association was not orga- 
nized as an alms-giving society. In 1831 the condition 



THE BETTERING-HOUSE. 415 

of affairs was very similar to that in existence now. 
The poor were thriftless and numerous ; there were all 
sorts of societies, working independently and without 
knowledge of each other's pensioner. There was then 
no Central Bureau, and the imposter who was detected 
by one society lightly laughed and applied to another. 
" The Union Benevolent " meant to be just what the 
"Organized Charity" now aims for. It wished to 
unite the existing charities, and to educate both the 
alms-giver and the alms-taker in the best methods of de- 
stroying pauperism. But the needs of the poor have 
been pressed on the visitors, and a great portion of the 
work has been simply relief and assistance. In this 
way it has fallen into routine methods, and at last be- 
came little more than the most influential and best 
managed of the alms-giving societies. Yet it was, even 
in those years, wise and discreet in its charities. It 
was impossible that it should have had the women 
whose names run year after year on its records, and not 
have been of permanent value. It had a store for the 
sale of clothing, where a monthly average of thirty-four 
women have found constant employment in sewing, and 
many a child owes its nurture and education to its 
mother's regular earnings there. It is conducted on the 
most quiet and non-competitive system, yet last year its 
business amounted to nearly four thousand dollars, and 
over three thousand were paid to sewing women and em- 
ployes. In the way of practical charity only the poor 
can tell the tale. How many hundreds of sick have 



416 A SYLVAN CITY. 

been supported, how many dead buried, how many chil- 
dren provided for, not even the records show. Here 
was the fatherless boy sent to Girard College, and there 
the girl given a home in the country. If the house of a 
seamstress was too forlorn to attract customers, she was 
told to scrub and clean, and then a little cheap matting, 
a few whole chairs, transformed the place ; patrons were 
interested, and the woman's name vanished from the 
charity lists. Boys were set up in business as boot- 
blacks or newspaper boys. It only cost a little money 
to get the start, and he made "the plant," and then 
there was bread at home even if there was no butter. 

One of the best known and characteristic of this Asso- 
ciation's charities is the " stove." What visitor of the 
poor does not know the "U. B." stove, and what second- 
hand dealer would dare to sell one ! He could take a 
diamond from a crown and manage to palm it off and 
get his price for it, but the comical little stove that was 
invented for the society when anthracite coal first came 
into use, and which will bake and boil and make a 
room warm and cheery, has a personality that cannot 
be disguised, and none of the people to whom they are 
loaned would dare to sell them, even if any would dare 
to buy one. Two hundred and twent^^-four of these 
were loaned last year from the fall to the spring. 

The men who make up the Executive Board, and 
who are always well-known citizens, have brought the 
Association to the front on many questions pertinent 
to its objects. It has petitioned the Legislature on 



THE BETTERING-HOUSE. 



417 



matters of temperance and the license laws, and on false 
weights. It long ago denounced the misuse of public 
funds by the Guardians of the Poor, and has instructed 
both the employer and his working people on various 




THE 



U, B." STOVE. 



moral and legal questions. It has kept in its office a 
register for children ; and down in the cellar it has — as 
a prudent Joseph in charge of the people should — stored 
vegetables and flour against the days of winter famine 
and high prices. When the snow comes, the man who 



418 A STLVAIi CITY. 

wants to earn an honest, if a cold penny, goes there 
and borrows one of its snow-shovels, and many a ped- 
dler has had the loan of money enough to start in 
business with a well-stocked basket ; while the woman 
who had sewing, but no needle or cotton, went and had 
her wants supplied. These practical little charities in 
the way of housekeeping for the poor are the result of a 
long experience, and the Association, fighting poverty 
for so many years, has learned that the summer ought 
to provide for the winter, and the day of plenty for 
famine. That it is one of the institutions in which 
Philadelphians have confidence is proved by the fact 
that they are apt to remember it in their wills. 

About the time the Union Benevolent was formed, 
and its founders were discussing remedies for pauper- 
ism, the Guardians of the Poor, who were forced to 
accept the pauper as he was, were as busy determining 
how they could take better care of him. The Bettering- 
House, on Spruce street, had had many experiences, 
and the " chole.ra year" had proved its want of ca- 
pacity. The pestilence had raged there in a terrific 
manner, and coffins were kept piled in the 3'ard read}' 
for use. The man who died after breakfast was buried 
before dinner, and sometimes there was not a nurse to 
be had. The Sisters of Charity came in and took charge 
for some weeks, and ])y them many a poor heretic was 
baptized before he died, and so his road through pur- 
gatory made more easy. The distress and loss of 
occupation resulting from this pestilence brought great 



THE BETTERING-HOUSE. 431 

numbers to the house, and the wards were crowded. 
Little by Uttle the ground had been sold, so that the 
farm was gone, the forest trees cut down, and only the 
garden left. The people who built on the streets which 
had succeeded the foot-paths over the meadows grum- 
bled because of their pauper neighbors, and the Guar- 
dians at last determined to build and move. 

This new enterprise was, however, to be final ; and so, 
to secure a site beyond city encroachments, they se- 
lected a large lot of ground across the Schuylkill Kiver, 
and on its banks, and there they built the ideal Alms- 
house. It was to be a great credit to the city, and the 
pauper must have regarded it with admiring interest. 
Here was something that wisely accepted things as they 
were. The pauper was not to be abolished, but made 
comfortable, and this was what ought to be expected of 
a paternal government, and they probably approved of 
their new quarters when they were moved over, in the 
summer of 1835, four thousand in number, in wagons, 
in furniture cars, and all sorts of vehicles. It must have 
been a motley procession, and no " Centennial " is likely 
to reproduce it. The insane were tied and chained ; 
the women were stowed away as well as possible, and 
many a sturdy fellow must have tramped over on foot, 
reasonably eager to see his new house. They crossed 
the river by the South Street ferry, the insane leading 
the way ; and, except Charon, what boatman ever car- 
ried such a crew! Once in " Blockley " they were 
housed in the spacious wards, and the work of regen- 



423 A SYLVAN CITY. 

eration soon began. The officials in the Almshouse 
confronted the administration of pauperism, and there 
was little theory about this. It was all practice, and 
some experiment. There was nothing easy but the 
admission of the inmates. Inside the stone walls 
was a little city filled with degradation, with distress, 
with all that was helpless and forlorn. Over it all was 
the governor, or " steward ;" and upon his wisdom and 
faithfulness the whole administration depended. The 
condition of most public institutions and as3'lums was 
at this time simply frightful. Elizabeth Fry and Doro- 
thea Dix had drawn public attention in England and 
the United States to the hardships and abuses existing 
in such institutions, but the pressure of public opinion 
penetrated few of the walls, and everything depended 
on the character of the men in actual charge. The 
great misfortune la}', of course, in the fact that the 
abuses, neglects and tyrannies naturally fell on the most 
helpless. There was little expectation of curing the in- 
sane, and if they could be kept quiet and out of the 
way it was well enough. If they were too violent, a 
straight-jacket, a chain, a lancet or a shower-bath sub- 
dued them, and visitors were sometimes taken to the 
cells to see them sitting alone, beating the floor, tearing 
their clothes, or waiting in wicked, sullen insubordina- 
tion for a chance for revenge. If they recovered their 
senses it was in spite of their treatment, and never be- 
cause of it. In the Spruce Street " Bettering-House " 
women who either could not or would not work were 



THE BETTERINO-H0U8E. 



423 



put on the treadmill, and if one was too obstinate or too 
weak to raise her foot in time to take eacli step as it 
came down she was struck and bruised on the instep ; 
but that was her own lookout. 
In the old house many evils existed in consequence of 




IX THE SLUMS. 

the crowded, inconvenient condition of affairs, but this 
new one gave room for much reform. And it was made. 
The men were set to work in the quarries and on the 
farm, and the women knitted stockings for the house 
and sewed. The treadmill was not allowed to emigrate 



424 A SYLVAN CITY. 



from Spruce Street, and the shower-bath was abolished, 
except when it was ordered by tlie doctors, wlio had 
faith in it as a curative remedy. The well were no 
longer bled nor cupped, the insane were visited, and 
every little while some one who showed gleams of rea- 
son would be brought from the cells into the ''Main 
Building," clothed and set at some congenial work, and 
the experiment often ended in the final discharge of the 
cured patient. There was great faith at that time, in 
this institution, in the beneficial effect of interesting 
employment and the absence of irritating surroundings ; 
and so it happened more than once that men who had 
been chained as violent maniacs became excellent gar- 
deners, industrious and trustworthy mechanics. Women 
who had been dressed in one garment made of coffee- 
sacks, because they tore their clothes up, and who 
cursed every one who came near them, Avere converted 
into seamstresses and even nurses to tenderly-nurtured 
children. There was a new classification in the wards 
in many ways, and the whole administration was clean, 
honest and intelligent. 

The Guardians found all of this exceedingly interest- 
ing. It Avas true they did little of the work, but it 
needed constant supervision, and so once a week they 
came driving over in hired carriages to attend to that 
department. K"aturally enough the long ride and river 
air gave them appetites, and this was the time to test 
the Philadelphia markets ! In 1852 it cost $1.04 per 
week to feed a Philadelphia pauper, but where are the 



THE BETTEEINO-H0U8E. 425 



statistics to show what it cost fifteen years before to 
feed their Guardians ? They tried to save the feelings 
of taxpayers by having a hothouse, where fruits and 
flowers could be raised without appearing as an item in 
the bills, but there were other expenses which, they 
felt, were made too conspicuous. They could see no 
reason w^hy wine should not be put among ."Medical 
Supplies;" and as mutton can be converted into veni- 
son, they thought the process should be reversed. It 
annoyed the hungry supervisors to have a spade called 
a spade in the steward's account, and whenever this was 
printed their opinion of his administration went down 
to zero. They sometimes had to explain to taxpayers 
about the time required for the visits and the distance, 
and give no end of other good reasons for their dinners 
and other expenses, and they did not like it at all when 
the taxpayer at last rebelled, and the cakes and ale and 
early strawberries all came to an end and there was no 
more feasting. It became more difficult to get a quorum, 
and when the managers met around a table decorated 
with paper, pens and ink, instead of good old Port and 
lobsters, w^hat wonder they had their own feelings to- 
ward any one who would tell the public how he spent 
its money, and how deeply they came to feel that he 
was not the man for the place ! 

This story of extravagance and waste has run on 
year after year, sometimes checked for a little while, 
and then worse than before, until now it has climaxed 
in an exposure that has proved that it has not been the 



426 A SYLVAN CITY. 

pauper who has been corrupted and ruined b}' public 
charity, but the men who were intrusted with its 
administration. 

The moral of these disclosures is very simple. It is 
not that the public officials should be honest and content 
with their legitimate earnings, but more than this — that 
the voting taxpayer should look after his public house- 
keeping, and not be quite so much afraid to ask his em- 
ployes for bills and receipts. He trusts them to spend his 
money, but until he is forced to do so he has great deli- 
cacy in asking how they spent it. If his wife conducted 
his home on this principle, he Avould have a very de- 
cided opinion of her capacity, and she — she would prob- 
ably long for the repose of the river Bagdad. 

The story of the " Bettering-House" tells the story of 
much municipal charity in Philadelphia. There has 
been nothing niggardly in the ajipropriations, and the 
city has given to its poor a spacious, good home, and a 
liberal income for its support. The result has been the 
encouragement of pauperism, the defrauding of the 
poor, and the corruption of public officers. Whether 
the day will come when the Almshouse will be abolished, 
and Homes for the helpless, with Hospitals for the sick, 
take its place, is beyond prophecy, but one of the 
healthful signs of progress lies in the fact that the work 
of the "Society for Organizing Charity" has enabled 
the city to abolish out-relief, and so save thousands of 
dollars annually. 

One of the first of the Homes in Philadelphia— cer- 








PICTURESQUE PAUPERS. 



THE BETTERmG-HOUSE. 429 

tainly one of the most independent and magnificent — 
was founded in 1772 by the Avill of Dr. John Kearsley, 
and called by him "Christ Church Hospital." No one 
can know better than the physician how forlorn is the 
position of a dependent, sick, or aged Protestant woman. 
She has no convent to which she can go for refuge, and 
she too often finds her claims on kindred or gratitude 
but ropes of sand. She is not always the kind of per- 
son who adds to the happiness or comfort of a family. 
She is apt to be queer, and has to be "considered ;" she 
is little help, and plays the part of a fifth-wheel among 
active people. Still she is not the happier because she 
is useless, but she is the more to be pitied. Dr. Kears- 
ley no doubt had many such anchorless wrecks among 
his patients. He was an Englishman by birth, and came 
to Philadelphia in 1711. He was alwaj^s a busy and 
conspicuous character ; he practiced medicine ; he inter- 
ested himself in architecture — and Avhoever would see 
what he did can look at Christ Church and Indepen- 
dence Hall — and he was a member of the House of As- 
sembly and an enthusiastic churchman. The people 
liked his speeches so well that they would catch him up 
as he came out of the Assembly and carry him home on 
their shoulders, and the churchmen presented him with 
a piece of plate worth fifty pounds to testify to their 
appreciation of the energy with which he had, against 
discouragement of all kinds, persevered until Christ 
Church was rebuilt. The vestry had found it easy to 
resolve that the little church should be enlarged and a 



430 A SYLVAN CITY. 



foundation for a steeple laid, but they had no money, 
nor did they take steps to get any. Then Dr. Kearsley 
offered to advance what was needed until subscriptions 
could be raised, and thus enabled them to begin the 
work at once. In after years he opened the subscrip- 
tion for the chimes, and was always the friend in need 
where the church was concerned. When he died, he 
left his jDroperty to Christ and St. Peter's Churches for 
the maintenance of at least "ten poor and distressed 
women of the communion of the Church of England." 
Dr. Kearsley died in 1772, and in 1789 Joseph Dobbins 
gave to the same charity five hundred pounds and two 
lots of ground ; and then at his death, in 1804, increased 
the legacy by devising to its hospital all the remainder 
of his property. 

The two benefactors proba1)ly fancied the valuable 
portion of their legacies was the money portion, but 
the Doctor's land lay in such locations as Front and 
Market, and Arch above Third, and the ground called 
" Lot No. 4 from Schuylkill " by Mr. Dobbins, was be- 
tween Eighteenth and Nineteenth and Spruce and Pine. 
Such property came to be a splendid bequest, and the 
"Lot No. 4" alone, after lying idle and forlorn for 
seventy years, sold for one hundred and eighty thou- 
sand dollars. The revenues have been managed by 
l^rudent business men, and the hospital has always kept 
within its means, has never been in debt, and never had 
to solicit assistance. In its early days it occupied a 
small two-stor}'^ house on the Arch street property, and 



THE BETTERING-HOUSE. 431 

accommodated eight ladies, who knitted and sewed, and 
on Sunday went down the street to Christ Church to 
service, and on week-days took little runs out to see 
their friends. Of course they were thankful, and of 
course they grumbled and gave sufficient occupation to 
the three vestrymen from each church who were in 
charge of the charity. Then there came more appli- 
cants, and the house was torn down and a larger one 
built. In time this also became too small, and so a 
still more spacious building was erected on the same 
lot, but fronting on Cherry Street. Here forty old ladies 
could be accommodated, but sometimes two had to share 
a room, and the matron, as referee, seems sometimes 
to have had reason to regret the arrangement. 

By 1856 the hospital had an annual income of over 
nineteen thousand dollars, and so the managers deter- 
mined to build again. They bought a farm of over two 
hundred acres of Jesse George, near the West Park, and 
built the present home. It would accommodate one hun- 
dred inmatee, but the income, which has suffered from 
shrinkage of values, supports only forty at present. It 
might be suggested to good churchmen — for with this 
work the women have had nothing to do except as pen- 
sioners — that every dollar given here would go directly 
to the support of additional inmates, as all the running 
expenses are already secured. 

One of the most pleasant features in this place is the 
prevalence of family life. It has happened that the 
managers have several times been able to take mothers 



433 A SYLVAN CITY. 

and daughters, sisters and other near relations ; so that 
Uttle homes are set all through the great building, and 
there is a completeness and content preserved that is 
not possible when charity breaks all family ties. These 
beneficiaries have many comforts not common in all such 
institutions, some of which they owe to ther rural situa- 
tion, and others to the thoughtfulness of the managers. 
The leading magazines are taken, there are daily papers 
and a library. On Sunday and week-days service is 
held in the beautiful chapel, which is in one wing, and 
so arranged that any one too feeble to go down 
stairs can enter the gallery from the second floor 
and worship there. The whole building is fire-proof. 
They have a farmer, and fresh vegetables, cows and 
chickens ; and many a worse lot falls to poverty-stricken 
human beings than that of being "a poor and dis- 
tressed woman of the communion of the Church of 
England," if this condition leads to a home at Christ 
Church Hospital. In spite of all their worries, the good 
ladies, who, as Protestants, cannot pray for the repose 
of the souls of their two benefactors, must yet follow 
them with many tranquil, happy thoughts. 

This, as we have said, is a man's charity, founded and 
governed by men, and it justifies their best opinion of 
their own management. 

The '^Ilome for Incurables " belongs to women, and 
although they have an "Advisory Board" of men, 
the members of it consider a better title would be 
an "Indorsing Board," as all they do is to obey 



THE BETTERmG-HOUSE. 435 

orders. It was founded on a legacy of one little gold 
dollar. There was in West Philadelphia a young 
girl who had been confined to her bed from early 
childhood, and she, often thinking of those who suffered 
as much but were not cared for as she was, longed to 
make them as comfortable. She used to talk to her 
mother about a home for incurables, and one day when 
a gold dollar was given her she said it could be put 
away as the foundation for a fund for such a home. It 
was a light enough fancy on her part, but it became an 
inspiration. After the girl died the money was remem- 
bered, and her mother and her friends determined to see 
her wish carried out. It was easy enough to arouse in- 
terest, as every one knew the need of such an institu- 
tion. In the hospitals established for curative purposes 
there was no room for patients pronounced beyond help, 
and even at the Almshouse the transient pauper was 
preferred to the permanent patient. Every one knew 
of helpless sick who were suffering in poverty, or sup- 
ported by hard exertion or grudging charity. There was 
need enough that the little gold dollar should be put to 
use. The women who were interested went to work 
determined to succeed. The}^ held fairs and solicited 
subscriptions. Those of them who could, gave money, 
and all worked ; and in 1877 they had raised enough 
money to authorize them in opening a home out on the 
Darby Road. 

At the end of the year they had sixteen patients and 
a lengthening list of applicants. There were people in 



436 A SYLVAN CITY. 

all stages of disease, and with every shape of it, asking 
for admission, but the managers had not only to limit 
the number admitted, but they had to exclude all 
diseases not easily managed in their building. A hos- 
pital for such uses demands peculiar accommodations 
and appliances, and the next step was to build one. So, 
then, this was accomplished. Men gave money to buy 
ground and women endowed beds, and the managers 
took care that as their mortar hardened no debt hardened 
with it. They had not money enough to build as large 
a house as they needed, but the plans provided for ex- 
tensions, and there is ground enough. The house really 
looks like a home, and a very beautiful one. It is well 
arranged, and no detail of comfort or convenience has 
been neglected, and the result would have delighted and 
astonished the owner of the little gold dollar. 

Because the building is yet too small, and the man- 
agers are not willing to hinder their work by a debt, 
they have still to turn away hundreds of applicants. 
They have no wards for men nor children, and can take 
no one suffering from consumption, epilepsy or cancer. 
The only vacancies are made by death. 

These are a few of the charities of Philadelphia. They 
represent municipal relief and its abuses ; out-door re- 
lief and its methods ; a church home and a hospital. 
Each came because it was needed, and each deserves 
attention. 



THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS. 



"Upon his entree into Boston society the stranger is 
met with the query, impUed if not spoken, ' What do 
you know ?' — into New York society with, ' Wliat are 
you worth?' — and into Philadelphia society with, 'Who 
was your grandfather ?' " The journalist who let slip 
from his pen this familiar criticism, epigrammatic if not 
axiomatic, was something of a cosmopolitan ; and that 
fine old master of sententious Saxon, slightly American- 
ized, Dr. Holmes, has indulged in a bit of witticism 
equally as pungent in referring to the Quaker City as 
"the genealogical centre of the United States." 

Those Philadelphians "to the manner born" who 
claim the ancestral distinguishment for the placid 
burgh of their nativity by way of explanation and 
corroboration, cite the fact that, while the intrepid 
Puritans who landed from the Mayfloicer at Plymouth 
Rock had come from the lowlier walks of life, and that 
while the sturdy Teutons who, under the guidance of 
the explorer Hudson, disembarked upon Manhattan 
Island, had also occupied humble estates in the father- 
land, yet the Quaker compeers of the founder of Penn- 
sylvania, who in 1682 landed upon these sylvan shores 
from the Welcome, comprised many men of high position 

437 



438 



A SYLVAW CITT. 




(1) THE SIMS ARMS, FROM jL TOMBSTONE IN ST. PETER'S 
CUURCIIYARD. 



THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS. 



439 




(2) LLOTD-STANLEY. 



440 



A STLVAN CITY. 



— descendants of English and Scottish sovereigns, rela- 
tives of British nobles, representatives of the landed 
gentry of the Mother Isle, collegians and men of letters. 




(3) GR^ME. 

Just how many of these distinguished emigrants had 
sought America's broad shores to escape hanging, local 
chronicles magnanimously refuse to disclose. That, 
however, one of the early members oi the Provincial 
Council had left England because of the provoking ex- 
istence of a superfluity of wives, and that the daughter 
of another early councillor — who was also at one time 
chief magistrate of the province — married a pirate, can- 
not be authoritatively denied. 

A distinctive element of that phase of society popu- 
larly known as "aristocracy," whether monarchial or 
democratic, is heraldry, which, in encyclopedical Ian- 



THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS. 



441 



guage, is defined as "the art of arranging and explain- 
ing in proper terms all that relates or appertains to the 
bearing of arms, crests, badges, quarterings and other 
hereditary marks of honor. " As a rule, in European 
countries and in Great Britain all distinguished fami- 
lies, not only those belonging to the nobility, but to the 
landed gentry as well, bear distinctive coats-of-arms. 
This of course is a matter of common knowledge. It 
may not be as generally known, however, that during 




(4) ASSHETON. 

the last century, especially prior to the war for Inde- 
pendence, arms were frequently borne by Americans, 
particularly by Philadelphians and Bostonians, and by 



442 A STL YAW CITY. 

the leading families of South Carolina, Virginia and 
Maryland. Yet such is the fact. For many years sub- 
sequent to the war of the Revolution, however, the use 
of heraldic devices remained in ill favor, everything 
that savored of royalty being rigorously tabooed. But 
for this Spartan sentiment nature soon provided a 



(5) dic;kinson. 

ica^^nt In that love of ceremony which wealth and ease 
are sure to call forth. Within the past half century the 
ante-bellum custom has been revived in this country 
to an astonishing extent, until we have become alto- 
gether accustomed to the sight, in polite circles, of 
coats-of-arms and crests upon stationery, plate, furni- 
ture, coaches and the like. 



TEE BIGHT TO BEAR ARMS. 



443 



In favor of this armorial revival it is urged that the 
custom, if properl}^ understood, is not at all a concomi- 
tant or an evidence either of snobbishness or of social 
exclusiveness. But, it is maintained, heraldry is an 
invaluable aid to biography and genealogy. Says an 




(6) BUSHROD WASHINGTON. 

American writer, "Arms are worthy of preservation, 
since they are valuable evidence for the genealogist." 

On the other hand it is maintained with equal vigor 
that the indulgeijce in heraldic devices evidences a 



444 



A SYLVAN CITY, 




(7) PENX. 

monarchial tendency, altogether out of place among 
republican institutions ; and that, while heraldry may 
have been an aid to the genealogist in semi-feudal ages, 
in these days of comprehensive journalism and a super- 
abundant literature practically there is no need to resort 
to armory in the making of genealogical investigations ; 
and, further, that while some American families are 
undeniably entitled to bear arms, the great majority of 



THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS. 



445 



those who do bear them are mere usurpers, who auda- 
ciously assume the arms of certain EngUsh famiUes of 
the same name, in whose veins flows not a drop of kin- 
dred blood — unless, perchance, the two families happen 
to be, in common, lineal descendants of Noah. 

This last objection is unquestionably a tangible and a 
truthful one. It has been asserted with much positive- 
ness that of the many Massachusetts families now 
bearing arms, only eleven have a technical, i. e., an 
hereditary right to them. To a more or less extent the 




(8) LOGAN. 

same thing can be said of Pennsylvania. There are 
scores of families in Philadelphia to-day whose station- 
ery is gorgeously illuminated with armorial insignia, to 



446 



A SYLVAN CITY. 



which they have no more right than to the castles and 
estates of the nobihty and gentry whose arms they have 
filched. There is no question but that this is a species 
of combined robbery and snobbery which is unpleas- 
antly common. 

The mode of procedure is as follows : Mr. Michael 
Patrick McLarry has recently " struck oil" — or a " bo- 
nanza." Mr. Michael Patrick McLarry having settled 







(9) BARTKAM. 

himself in his brown-stone front, and having decked 
his mansion, his family, and his person with all the ap- 
proved accoutrements of wealth, wends his way to the 



THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS. 



447 



Professional Pedigree Preserver and Armorial Artist, 
and informs that individual that he desires a coat-of- 
arms, " as foine as inny in the market." The astute and 
urbane P. P. P. A. A. A. inquires the customer's name, 





(10) SHIPPEN. (11) PEMBERTON. 

which is given. He then opens, at the letter M, a mas- 
sive tome, very nearly as large as the "Philadelphia 
Directory," known as Burk's "General Armory." He 
turns the leaves backward and forward, hesitates with 
some little concern for a moment, and then suddenly 
exclaims : " Ah, yes ! Do you think you are descended 
from the Mallories, of Mallorie Manor, County Surrey?" 
"I think so, sorr," rephes Mr. Michael Patrick Mc- 
Larry, with a look and in a tone which give conclusive 
evidence that he doesn't think anything of the kind ', 
and the ratio of probabilities to possibilities is as a 



448 



A SYLVAN CITY. 




(12) JANNEY. 

thousand to one that he would have made precisely the 
same reply if the Molarries, of Molarrie Castle, County 
Sussex, had been cited, instead of the Mallories, of Mal- 
lorie Manor, County Surrey. 




-'^f ^HiW ARMS 

(13) CHEW. 



THE BIOHT TO BEAR ARMS. 



449 







^^m 




(14) LARDNER. 

This method, however, is by some fastidious indi- 
viduals deemed to be entirely too vulgar. Their mode 
of procedure is somewhat more genteel — at least it is 





(15) WILLING. 



(10) MORKISJ. 



450 



A SYLVAN CITY. 



more expensive. A trip to Europe and a visit to the 
Herald's College, in London, are essential to the carry- 
ing out of this more select plan of action. To obtain an 




(17) HOLLINGSWORTH. 

assignment of arms it is customary to present a petition 
to the Earl Marshal, and the applicant is required, 
nominally, to produce evidence that he can sustain the 
rank of gentry. The fee for a general search is £2 2s. ; 
for an ordinary search 5s. ; and for copying and regis- 



THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS. 



451 



tering 6s. 6cZ. for the first, and 5s. for every other 
generation. The officials are very affable, and the 
search clerks not critically captious ; and the customer 




(20) NORRIS 



(21) TILGHMAN. 



453 



A SYLVAN CITY. 




(22) POWEL. 

carries away with him the arms of his newly-acquired 
forefathers, which are thereafter cherished with much 
solicitude — i. e., with emotions somewhat akin to those 
entertained by the eccentric Major-General in the 
'* Pirates of Penzance," who sits in pensive melancholy 
in an old chapel, upon his recently-purchased estate, and 
indulges in that plaintive colloquy which, though fami- 
liar, is worth quoting : 



THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS. 



453 



^^ General. Why do I sit here? To escape from the 
pirates' clutches I described myself as an orphan, and I 
am no orphan. I came here to humble myself before the 
tombs of my ancestors, and to implore their pardon for 
the disgrace I have brought upon them. 

Frederick. But you forget, sir. You only bought the 
property a year ago, and the stucco on your baronial castle 
is scarcely dry. 

General. Frederick, in this chapel are ancestors ; you 
cannot deny that. I don't know whose ancestors they 
were, but I know whose ancestors they are, and I shudder 
to think that their descendant by purchase (if I may so 




(23) MCCALL. 

describe myself) should have brought disgrace upon what 
I have no doubt was an unstained escutcheon." 

There are, however, in Philadelphia many old fami- 
lies who bear arms, not ostentatiously, but modestly, 
which have been borne b}'^ their ancestors before them 



454 



A SYLVAN CITY, 



for a century and more. As to how these heraldic em- 
blems, individually or as a whole, came to be originally 
borne the writer declines to express an opinion. That 
a very large percentage of those whose coats-of-arms are 
referred to in this sketch are lineal descendants of fine 
old families belonging to the English, Welsh, Scotch or 
Irish gentry, and that they, therefore, bear their armo- 
rial insignia by right of heredity, the writer is firmly 
convinced. That, however, some few of them bear their 




(3-t) GILPIN. 

arms without such right cannot be questioned ; for no 
less a personage than the eminent and cultured James 
Logan, Chief Magistrate of the Province from 1736 
to 1738, has left a manuscript — recently published in 
Keith's "Provincial Councillors" — to wit, a letter to 



THE niOHT TO BEAR ARMS. 



455 



Cornal George Logan, dated September 9, 1713, in which 
he frankly says : 

"N. Griffitts infonning me that thou desirest ye coat-of- 
arms belonging to our name, I here give thee in wax what 




(25) LENOX. 

I have on my seal, but believe neither of us have any very 
good right to it, being what the English Logans of Ox- 
fordshire carry ; but those of Scotland, I have been told, 
have a very different one (and yet a good one), wh. I 
have never seen ; however, having occasion for a seal, and 
linding only this in my way I made use of it, nor do I fear 
a citation to ye Herald's Of&ce for my presumption." 

Before going farther it may be well to premise a brief 
statement of the significance attached to the more 
common of the heraldic lines and symbols. 

The "shield," or the leading feature of an armorial 
-■Qat, is distinguished by certain colors, called "tine- 



456 



A SYLVAN CITY. 




(26) ALLISON. 

tures," which are separated by division hnes. The 
tinctures used in heraldry are metals, colors and furs. 
They are often expressed in their natural colors, but in 
drawings and engravings are represented by certain 
lines and points — an invention of a noted Italian herald, 
Sylvester Petra-Sancta. The two metals employed are : 
or, or gold, represented by little dots in a plain field ; and 
argent^ or silver, expressed by the shield being entirely 
white. The five colors used are : azure, or blue, de- 
picted by horizontal lines ; gules, or red, shown by per- 
pendicular lines ; vert, or green, indicated by parallel 
lines from the dexter chief to the sinister base — i. e., 
Jirom the upper right-hand corner to the lower left-hand 



THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS. 



457 



corner ; sable, or black, designated by cross lines, hori- 
zontal and perpendicular ; and purpure, or purple, rep- 




DE^^NY. JOHN PENN. 

(27) THE SEALS OF FIVE EARLY GOVERNORS. 

resented by lines from the sinister chief (upper left-hand 
corner) to the dexter base (lower right-hand corner). 
The furs most frequently employed are : ermine, de- 



458 A SYLVAN CITY. 



picted by a white field with black spots of a peculiar 
shape ; and ermines^ indicated by a black field with simi- 
larly shaped white spots. These explanations, which 
are, of course, technical and encyclopedic, are given in 
order that the reader of this sketch maybe made familiar 
not only with the charges upon the accompanying coats- 
*of-arms, but also with the hereditary tinctures with 
which these heraldic coats are colored — in a word, that 
the artist's work may be intelligently examined. 

The arms of William Penn, whose father, Vice- Ad- 
miral William Penh, was knighted by Charles II, were 
long borne by members of his family, and are borne to- 
day by Major Peter Penn-Gaskell Hall, U. S. A., of this 
city, quartered with those of the Gaskell family (7). 

Judge Bushrod Washington, who for many years 
honored the United States Circuit Court Bench at Phi- 
ladelphia, bore the same arms as did General George 
Washington, both the general and the judge being de- 
scendants, as is supposed, of theWashingtons in the north 
of England. The same arms are borne to-day by William 
Herbert Washington, Esq., of the Philadelphia bar (6). 
Among other distinguished Philadelphians of early 
times was Thomas Lloyd, born in 1640, who was the 
first Chief Magistrate of the Province under Penn. His 
ancestry can be traced back through "the fair Maid of 
Kent " to the latter's grandfather, Edward I. Many of 
Lloyd's descendants, through the female branches, are 
now living in Philadelphia, who bear the Lloyd arms, 
impaled with those of Thomas Lloyd's mother, nee 



THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS. 



459 



Elizabeth Stanley. The accompanying illustration is 
that of a coat-of-arms on an oak panel formerly at Dolo- 
bran Hall — the Lloyd estate — Dolobran, County Mont- 
gomery, Wales (2). 




(38) RIDDLE. 

Dr. Thomas Grseme, another early member of the 
Provincial Council, was also of ro} al lineage, his ances- 
tor being Sir Thomas Graham (or Grseme) who married 
a daughter of King Robert III of Scotland. ]Srone of 
his descendants are now living in Philadelphia, but the 
Gra3me coat-of-arms, as borne by the famous Elizabeth 



460 



A SYLVAN CITY. 



Ferguson, nee Graeme, his daughter, is given here- 
with (3). 

Robert Assheton, who was lilvewise a Provincial 
Councillor early in the last century, descended from Sir 
John de Assheton, who was made a Knight of the Bath 
at the coronation of Henry lY. None of Robert Asshe- 
ton's descendants now reside in Philadelphia ; but so 
long as any members of the family remained they bore 
the Assheton arms as given above (4). 

James Logan, born in 1674, besides being a Provincial 
Councillor, was Penn's private secretary. Mayor of 
Philadelphia, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Pre- 





(29) WATMOUGH. (30) BOUDINOT. 

sident of the Council, etc. His coat-of-arms, referred 
to above, as borne by himself and by his descendants of 
the present day and as used by the Loganian Library, 
is also given herewith (8). 



THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS. 461 

Likewise will be found above the arms of John Dick- 
inson, born in 1732, author of the famous " Farmer's 
Letters," founder of Dickinson College, and, success- 




(31) THE SMYTH HATCHMENT AT CHRIST CHURCH. 

ively, President of Delaware and of Pennsylvania. His 
brother. General Philemon Dickinson — both being sons 
of Judge Samuel Dickinson, of Kent County, Delaware, 
— bore the same arms (5). 

Benjamin Franklin's brother, John Franklin, bore a 
coat-of-arms, as given above, although it is stated upon 



462 A SYLVAN CITY. 

very excellent authority that it was borne without right, 
being of spurious origin. That Benjamin Franklin 
brought this heraldic insignia with him when he emi- 
grated from Massachusetts is not clear. It is very prob- 
able that he did not (36). 

Among other distinguished members of the Provincial 
Council was Thomas Hopkinson. Francis Hopkinson, 
one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence 
from New Jerse}^, was a son of his, while a son of the 
signer, Joseph Hopkinson, was a distinguished judge, 
and the author of that familiar song, " Hail Columbia." 
The name is still a reputable one in Philadelphia. The 
Hopkinson arms are given herewith (38). 

Accompanying this sketch will also be found the arms 
of John Bartram, born in 1701, spoken of by Linnaeus 
as "the greatest natural botanist in the world." His 
grandfather, John Bartram, came from England with 
Penn, in 1682 (9). 

Among other distinguished Philadelphians whose de- 
scendants bear their arms, which are given herewith, 
may be noted the following : Edward Shippen, born in 
1639, a member and the president of the Provincial 
Council, Speaker of the Assembly, and the first Mayor 
of Philadelphia (10) ; Thomas Janney, born in 1633, for 
many years an esteemed minister of the Society of 
Friends, and one of the earliest members of the Pro- 
vincial Council (12) ; Benjamin Chew, born in 1722, 
member of the Council, Attorney-General, Chief Justice 
of the Supreme Court, President of the High Court of 



THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS. 



463 



Chancery, etc. (13) ; Dr. Thomas Caclwalader, an emi- 
nent physician in his day, who was also a member of the 
Provincial Council (32) ; Valentine Hollingsworth, who 
accompanied Penn in the Welcome^ in 1682, and who was 
a member of the first Assembly in 1683, and one of the 
first grand jury impanelled in the province (17) ; Isaac 
Norris, who came to Philadelphia in 1692, who was 
President Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, and, 
for upwards of thirty years, a member of the Provincial 





(32) CADWALADEK. (33) ABEKCROMBIE. 

Council (20) ; Charles "Willing, born in 1710, twice Mayor 
of Philadelphia, whose son, Thomas Willing, was the 
senior partner in the famous firm of Willing & Morris 
during the Revolution, and president of the first United 
States Bank (15), and PrancisRawle (18), Anthony Mor- 
ris (16), Phineas Pemberton (11), Lyndford Lardner (14), 
and James Tilghman (21), who, besides holding other 



464 A SYLVAN CITY. 

offices of honor, were members of that distinguished* 
body, so often referred to in this sketch, the Provincial 
Council. 

There are still other Philadelphia families who have 
borne arms since some time in the last century, among 
them the following : Biddle (28), Powel (22), Gilpin (24), ' 
Lenox (25), Allison (26), McCall (23), Penington (37), 
Williams (19), Boudinot (30), Watmough (29), and 
Abercrombie (33), 

Most of the illustrations given are fac similes or re- 
duced copies of book-plates — that is, engravings of 
family arms placed upon the inside of the front cover of 
the books comprising a library, as a distinguishing mark 
of ownership ; for books will be borrowed. Arms were 
chiefly used upon seals, however, in olden times, when 
pretty much all correspondence was fastened with 
sealing-wax, the envelope of the present being a thing 
not dreamed of. Accompanying will be found copies 
of the coats-of-arms, taken from the individual seals 
of five of the early Governors of the province, to wit., 
Patrick Gordon, 1726-36 ; James Hamilton, 1748-54, 
1759-63; Kobert Hunter Morris, 1754-56; William 
Denny, 1756-59, and John Penn, 1763-71, 1773-76 (27). 

Coats-of-arms have long been utilized also upon sta- 
tionery, silver plate, furniture and family coaches. This 
latter custom, a common one at the present time, was 
in vogue so early as the time of the first Isaac Norris, 
who came to Philadelphia in 1692. From a manuscript 
now extant, we find that in ordering his carriage he di- 



THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS. 



465 



'''Tt^"^j^.*t^l 







(34) VAULT COVERINGS AT CHRIST CHURCH BURIAL GROUND. 



466 



A SYLVAN CITY. 



rected his family arms, " tliree falcon heads," to be 
quartered upon it. 

Armorial coats have also for many years, and indeed 
for centuries, been made an important element in archi- 
tecture, in the shape of wood carvings, stone sculp- 
tures, and metal castings. Upon the grating covering 
each of the two lower front windows at the present 
rooms of the Historical Society, on Spruce Street above 
Eighth, is an iron casting of the arms of William Penn, 











(35j TUI^ I'LiilliS AKMS IN STUCCO, AT BELMONT. 



THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS. 



467 



the Founder, the appearance of which is indicated by 
the ilkistration (7). Coats-of-arms were likewise painted 
in panels upon the walls of many residences, and, in the 




t ADESTj i 

(36) FRANKLIN. 

form of stucco work, were placed upon the ceilings of 
family mansions. The arms of the Peters family, in 
this latter form, can be seen to-day upon the ceiling of 
one of the lower rooms at Belmont Mansion, in Fair- 
mount Park, formerly the historic residence of Judge 
Richard Peters, of Revolutionary fame (35). 

In early times coats-of-arms were also occasionally 
cut into gravestones and vault-slabs. At St. Peter's 



468 



A SYLVAN CITY. 



Church, Third and Pine Streets, there are two such her- 
aldic devices, one on the Sims slab (1), on the eastern 
end of the church, and the other on the south side of the 
Wallace vault, near the Third Street end of the church- 
yard (39). There can also be found at the present time, 
in the burial-ground of Christ Church, Fifth and Arch 
Streets, a number of coats-of-arms cut into old tomb- 
stones and vault-coverings ; but they present so crum- 
bled an appearance as to be perfectly illegible (34). An 
old custom, still much in vogue in Great Britain, was 
practiced in this country to some extent sevent3'-five or 
one hundred years ago. Reference is made to the use 








(37) PENINGTON. 

of hatchments upon the occasion of the death of some 
distinguished personage. Hatchments are lozenge- 
shaped frames charged with a sliield-of-arms — a sort of 
inescutcheon — usually affixed to the front of a house 
upon the decease of one of its principal inmates, and, 
upon the day of the funeral, carried to the church and 
hung upon the wall, or upon some convenient pillar, 



THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS. 



469 




(38) nopKiNSON. 
there to remain for all time. There are but two hatch- 
ments positively known to be in existence in America 
at the present time. One of these, containing the arms 
of Frederick Smyth, a former Chief Justice of New 
Jersey, hangs beneath the belfry of Christ Church, where 
it has remained since 1806. The only other authentic 
hatchment in this country is one known as the Ralph 
Izard hatchment, hanging in the quaint Church of St. 
James, at Goose Creek, S. C. The Izards are related 
to the Dray tons of Philadelphia, formerly a South Caro- 



470 



A SYLVAJSr CITY. 



Una family also. They are likewise related by marriage 
to the Shippens — George Izard, a son of Kalph Izard, 
having married the relict of Thomas Lee Shippen. 

The older we grow as a nation, the more heed we 
naturally give to matters historical and antiquarian ; 
and as genealogical research lies distinctively within 
the domain of the historian and paleologist, so the sub- 






f, 



I ' 1 V 



( f •! 1/41 f-ft — /' ' if/ y, \ I 

hem A^nn^ ^^ ltTv1|»TFRS^AAANr,E Cane ♦ 



/ 






(39) FROM THE WALLACE VAULT AT ST. PETER'S. 



THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS. 471 

ject of heraldry, which is, according to the argument of 
the armorial enthusiast, an important adjunct of gene- 
alogy, grows upon the attention of the careful student, 
and, to some extent, of the public as well. There is no 
doubt but that we have made more or less progress 
since the benighted days, some years ago, in which an 
English diplomatist in this country underwent so pain- 
ful an experience. While in jSTew York he sent his Lon- 
don chariot to a certain coachmaker's, and upon calling 
shortly afterwards was somewhat astounded at dis- 
covering his ancestral shield and crest upon half a 
dozen Yankee gigs and dog-carts, and having asked for 
an explanation was informed that "the pattern seemed 
to be very much admired." We have gotten beyond 
that stage of blissful ignorance, however, and we may 
well speculate with Mr. William H. Whitmore ("Ele- 
ments of Heraldry") as to whether or not, "with this 
increase of familiarity with the science, we may also 
expect a more scrupulous attention to its laws, and a 
decrease of the ridiculous assumptions which have 
thrown an undeserved stigma upon American Her- 
aldry." 



STEPHEN GIRARD: 

MARINER AND MERCHANT. 




"^ NDER the roof of an old nouse 
in Water Street, one Decem- 
ber day, over fifty years ago, 
a will was read, which made 
the City of Philadelphia one 
of the richest legatees on record. 
The fortune, as it then stood, 
amounted to nearly eight millions 
of dollars, but it included prop- 
erty which has grown so valuable 
that, great as are the expenses which have developed 
under the will, they do not consume even the interest, a 
portion of which is yearly added to the capital. The 
will provided for a plain and comfortable home which 
should hold at least one hundred orphan boys, and give 
them a support and education. The trustees instead 
built a marble palace, supported by pillars each of which 
cost thirteen thousand dollars. Everything else was in 
proportion, and magnificence was the only object held 
in view. Instead of a hundred boys, Girard College 
last year contained one thousand one hundred and 
four. The expenditures for the college the same year 

472 




STATUE OF STEPHEN GIRARD— AT THE COLLEGE DOORWAY. 



STEPHEN OIRARD. 475 

amounted to nearly five hundred thousand dollars. 
Over five hundred thousand were expended on other 
trusts, and yet there was a balance of over twenty thou- 
sand left unused. 

This is a handsome showing for one man, and he a 
foreigner, who had to borrow five dollars to bring him 
into the city ! And when Stephen Girard left this 
great fortune he did not leave it to perpetuate his name, 
or build a great monument to his memory. Each of 
the carefully-devised clauses showed that he meant it to 
be of honest, enduring use. He wanted fatherless boys 
educated as working men ; he wanted the river front 
improved, and the city made safer and more healthful ; 
the hospitals were to have larger means of helping the 
sick and insane, and nurses were to be educated. None 
of these objects were subjects of speculation with Girard ; 
he had a personal interest in each one. He was him- 
self an uneducated boy, and knew at what a disadvan- 
tage he had been placed. The river front had been the 
scene of his life-work ; and no one knew better what 
care the insane needed, and how necessary were trained 
nurses to the public. He had lived in Philadelphia 
through days of war and blockade ; through prosperity 
and through desolating plague. He came to it when it 
was part of the British colonies, and he had been the 
staunch, steady friend, not only of the city but of the 
Country, through many heavy, dark days. Having no 
children of his own he adopted those who were father- 
less. 



476 A SYLVAN CITY. 

• 

And Philadelphia ? How has she taken these bene- 
fits, and what has she done for the memory of her 
benefactor ? Apart from the extravagance of building 
such a school-home, she has administered the Trust 
with honesty and fidelity. There has never been a 
scandal attached to the Girard Estate, nor any question 
of its administration. As for the man himself — Phila- 
delphia has not only laughed at him, wondered over 
him, told hard stories of him, but she has. also allowed 
others to do so. She has never taken enough interest 
in him to have a biography written that would do him 
justice. She has suffered the most unblushing stories 
of him and of his family to go uncontradicted — she has 
never taken the trouble to inquire what sort of man he 
really was. 

Does any one believe that the morose and ancient 
figure with one eye — ill-clad, silent, repulsive, unob- 
servant — shambling through the streets of Philadelphia, 
which is pictured in all biographical sketches of Girard, 
really represents the alert, keen Frenchman, who, more 
than any other man, built up the city's commerce, who 
was the bravest in pestilence, the quickest to save the 
country from financial ruin, who made a fortune for 
himself and gave aid to the helpless ? 

Curious and eccentric he certainly was, but grapes 
grow on grape-vines, even though the vine be gnarled, 
and out of Girard's life came his virtues. He was keen 
at a bargain, just — not merciful ; but he was not crafty 
nor miserly ; he was not intolerant to the helpless, nor 



STEPHEN GIBARD. 



477 



did he sneer at religion. He had a heart as well as a 
brain, even if it were the weaker of the two. 

Stephen Girard was a 
man under a possession. 
He had a great talent, 
and it dominated him. 
In his pursuit of business 
he was as keen as a lover, 
and as blind to outside 
and diverting influences. 
It was not money-making 
that was his passion, that 
came as a logical result ; 
but he was absorbed in, 
and devoted to business. 




A CORNER OF THE COLLEGE. 



478 A STLVAJ^ CITY. 

He sometimes hardly seemed to realize the value of 
money to other people, and that a man should be ruined 
because he could not command a certain sum on a cer- 
tain day was almost a crime to him. No one had a 
right to get into such a position, and he should ask no 
pity. Girard had no patience with failures. If a man* 
had feet, let him stand on them. Xo one found Girard 
willing to act as a crutch, although he could go into the 
houses whose verj'- air was death, and in his arms carry 
out men Avho Avere dying with a pestilence. He 
believed in fraternity, but his employes were — his em- 
ployes. In his counting-room, his bank, his house, 
there was but one will, and that was his own. He paid 
for the work done for him. Did the worker need more 
money ? had he necessities beyond his income ? What 
was that to his employer ! He kept to his limits in all 
his relations in life, and never lost a clear sense of rela- 
tive positions. After his brother Jean died, he took 
charge of the three orphan children left in Philadel- 
phia. He sent them to the best schools, but he paid 
the bills out of the little estate their father left. His 
house was their home, and he was kind to them. He 
never bought a shawl or dress for one that he did not 
for the others, and he remembered their girlish fancies. 
After they had married from his house he petted their 
children, and liked to have them about, and indeed felt 
a right to the little people, but he never adopted these 
girls, and never seemed to have a father's devotion for 
them. He corresponded with his family in France, but 



STEPHEN GIRARD. 



479 




ON THE STAIRWAY — VISITORS' DAT. 



480 A SYLVAN CITY. 

he was too busy watching the markets of the world to 
give much time to individuals, even if they were his 
relations. 

He was born in Bordeaux, of a family characterized 
by a devotion to the sea and a talent for commerce. 
His grandfather, John Girard, was "Captain, Master, 
Patron," and his father and uncles repeated the record. 
His father, Pierre Girard, however, Avent farther, and 
was the hero of an adventure that brought the family 
much honor. England and France were, at the time 
of the story, at war, and both fleets were off Brest, 
watching chances to do mischief; and so England one 
day sent a fire-ship into the midst of the enemy and 
set aflame a ship of the line. At sea a ship on fire is 
not a desirable neighbor, and it may be imagined that 
the other vessels quickly drew out of danger. But 
Pierre Girard was the man for an emergency, so he up 
with his sails and went into action with the fire. He 
did not go to rescue the crew, but meant to put the 
fire out, and he succeeded. Then he sailed back to his 
place, and the crew of the endangered ship set them- 
selves to work, and were soon in condition to rejoin the 
fleet and look for revenge. It was so bold and well- 
managed an aftair that it was reported to Louis XV, 
who was greatly delighted, and, sending for Captain 
Girard, took the sword from his own side and kiiighted 
him by conferring on him the Order of St. Louis. He 
ordered a gold medal struck commemorating the act, 
and had the whole affair placed on record in the Admi- 



STEPHEN OIRARD. 



481 




IX THE COLLEGE LIBRARY. 



482 A SYLVAN CITY, 

ralty of Paris. And so Captain Girard went home to 
Bordeaux with the order on his coat, and the king's 
sword by his side, and when he died the sword was, 
according to his orders, placed in his coffin and buried 
with him. 

Stephen was the eldest child of this happy hero, and 
according to the baptismal record which we give, ap- 
pears to have been at first called by the French S3'n- 
onym of Etienne. In the records of the family the 
names of four others appear — two brothers, a sister, 
and one who is but once mentioned because he died 
and his father mourned for him greatly. Jean was 
near Stephen in age, being born in 1751, and was 
also the captain of a ship, merchant and trader. He 
had an estate in the West Indies, which seems to have 
been inherited from his father, but he was several times 
in Philadelphia, and was once in partnership with his 
brother. When he was off on his voyages he wrote 
frank and friendly letters to Stephen, and advised 
him of wines and flour, tobacco and other exports and 
imports. He sold barrels of hair-powder for Stephen, 
as well as family flour ; and in one of his letters gives 
his staid Philadelphia brother a comical commission by 
deputizing him as an ambassador in a love affair. He 
has made up his mind, he writes, that he should like to 
marry a certain " K. B." — he only gives her initials — 
in Philadelphia, but before he committed himself he 
wished Stephen to go see how the land lay. In the first 
place, his brother was to find out whether Jean's person 



STEPHEN GIRARD. 



483 



DEPABTEMSNT DE lA GIRONBB. 

HA[B]£ D£ lA YILLE DE BOKDEADL 




7^^^ 



Extrait du JRegisire des acies de ^:!^^3^f?:^^ 
de Van /^^/Bf. 












>*^^C 







STEPHEN GIRARD's BIRTH CERTIFICATE. 



and fortune were pleasing to the young lady, and then 
whether she had any money ; because if she had not, 



484 A SYLVAN CITY. 

Jean remarks, that will settle the matter. Something 
apparently did decide him in the negative, as he finally 
married a young Irish girl, who evidently was one of 
the few persons not in awe of Stephen, as, it is said, 
she once became so angry with him that she threw a 
bowl at his head, and so broke not only the bowl but 
*the partnership. AVhen this was done, Jean was worth 
sixty thousand dollars, while Stephen had but thirty. 
They must after this have made the quarrel up, be- 
cause Jean in his letters perpetually confides his " little 
family '' to Stephen's care, reminding him that in his 
own absence he, Stephen, is their onl}^ protector. The 
other brother, a second Etienne, who kept the name 
and who was born in 1757, was a lawyer and a school- 
fellow of Napoleon Bonaparte's. In the days of the 
French Revolution he was a member of the ' ' Franklin 
Club," and always held honorable positions in Bor- 
deaux. 

Both of these brothers had the advantage of being 
well educated, but Stephen never would go to college. 
When he was about seventeen he made some remarks 
at the table in the presence of his stepmother about 
second marriages, which displeased his father, who told 
him very promptly that if he could not behave in his 
house he could leave it. Stephcm was as quick to reply 
that nothing would suit him better, and if his father 
would give him " a venture" he would go at once. The 
father took him at his word and bought assorted goods 
to the value of a thousand francs, and with them Ste- 



STEPHEN GIRARD. 



485 




SECRETARY AND MUSICAL CLOCK PRESENTED TO GIRARD BY 
JEROME BONAPARTE. 



486 A SYLVAN CITY. 

phen set sail for the French West Indies, and so was 
launched in life. He began as cabin boy, but was soon 
promoted to be cook, and then went up grade after 
grade to steward, mate and captain, until he became, as 
he liked to say, "mariner and merchant," and was a 
master in both. He seems to have traded principally 
between I^ew Orleans and the West Indies, coming to 
Philadelphia for the first time in 17G9. When he came 
at last to stay, it was — if the story is true — by an acci- 
dent. In May of 1776, he was on his way in a sloop 
from Xew Orleans to Canada, when he was lost in a 
fog. His signal of distress brought an American vessel 
alongside, and Girard asked where he was. "In 
Delaware Bay." The next question was how was he 
to get out ? This, the American told him, was easy 
enough, but just outside the bay the sea swarmed with 
British cruisers, and his advice to the young Frenchman 
was, that having come safely in he should risk no more, 
but sail direct to Philadelphia and there dispose of his 
cargo. To this Girard objected ; he did not know the 
river, and had no money to pay a pilot. The captain 
then backed his advice by action, and lent Girard five 
dollars ; a pilot came on board,'and so Girard ignorantly 
and by chance, it seemed, W'ent to his future home in 
the Quaker City. In July, the ports were all block- 
aded by Lord Howe, and Girard sailed no more. He 
rented a little house on Water Street, and went into 
another ' ' venture" of assorted goods. He bought every- 
thing that he thought would sell again, but the business 



STEPHEN GIRARD. 



487 




STEPHEN GIRARD, HIS GIG. 



he found most profitable during all these early years 
was bottling wine and brandy, which were consigned to 
him in casks from Bordeaux. 

In front of his little shop there stood a pump, and 
among the girls who came for water was Polly Lum. 
She was young, and she was pretty ; her eyes were 
black, and her dark hair curled about her neck. Girard 
was not so absorbed that he could not see all this, 
nor was she indifterent to the conquest she made of the 
young Frenchman. He visited her, he asked her to 



488 A SYLVAJSr CITY. 

marry him, and Polly laughed and said she would, and 
so, on the sixth of July, 1777, they went to St. Paul's 
church and were married by the Rev. Dr. Samuel Ma- 
gaw. Then they went back to Water Street, and lived 
there until September, when Lord Howe, fancying he 
had business in Philadelphia, occupied the city, and so 
drove many of the inhabitants awaj', and among them 
the young Girards. They went to Mount Holly, New 
Jersey, where they bought a house for five hundred 
dollars, and Stephen again carried on the bottling busi- 
ness, but now sold his wine to the British. In 1778 Lord 
Howe left the city, and they returned. The after story 
of this marriage was certainly very miserable, but there 
seems to be no reason for the tales of the wife's unhap- 
piness from Girard's ill-treatment of her, nor of his 
dissatisfaction with her frivolity and ignorance. In her 
early and growing insanitj' there was misery enough to 
account for everything, and when at the end of eight 
years she had to be placed in the Pennsylvania Hospi- 
tal, his brother Jean, who had had every opportunity of 
knowing Stephen's domestic affairs, wrote to him : " I 
have just received your letter of the 12th, and I cannot 
express how I felt at the news. I truly grieved because 
of the terrible state you must be in, especially because I 
know the friendship and love you have for your wife." 
He then goes on to say that only business keeps him 
from going at once to console his brother, but adjured 
him to "conquer your grief, and show yourself a man, 
for when we have nothing with which to reproach our- 



STEPHEN OIRARD. 491 

selves, nothing should crush us." This letter has espe- 
cial value, for whatever else the Girards were they were 
not hypocrites, and Jean would not have irritated his 
brother by any effusive, empty condolence. There is 
every proof that Girard did his best for his wife. He 
had her under medical treatment at home, he sent her 
to the country, and wanted her to make a visit to 
France, but this was given up ; and when after a seven 
years' residence in the hospital she seemed better, he 
took her home again. But she grew worse, and there 
Avas no hope, and she was finally placed permanently in 
the hospital, where she died in 1815 ; and one of Girard's 
old friends says that as they stood around the coffin the 
tears ran down the husband's cheeks, and he was neither 
callous nor indifferent to his wife's death, nor to her 
memory. The first bequest in the will, and the largest 
made to any of the existing corporations, was to the 
hospital in which she had been cared for. She is remem- 
bered as an old woman, swarthy and dark-eyed, sitting 
in the sun, and hardly recognizing the old housekeeper 
who would sometimes take Girard's little nieces, Jean's 
daughters, to see her. 

During these years Girard was steadily at work. He 
had taken the oath of allegiance in 1777, and seems to 
have lost all desire to go to sea. He once made a trip 
to Leghorn, from whence he brought a table of various 
colored marbles ; but he lived in Water Street, content 
and busy. His ships went everywhere, beginning with 
one small vessel which sailed to the West Indies and 



492 A SYLVAN CITY. 

back, carrying cargoes both ways. As his profits en- 
abled him to do so, he bought other vessels and projected 
long voyages. He named his ships after French philos- 
ophers, and the 3£ontesquieu, the Voltaire and Rousseau 
were known in many ports. He would send a cargo to 
London, and there the ship would reload for another 
port, and so go on and on until it had sailed half around 
the world. He gave the most minute directions, and 
left nothing to the discretion of his employes, and 
nothing reconciled him to the slightest neglect of or 
change in his orders. He once sent a young supercargo 
with two ships on a two 3'ears' voyage. He was to go 
first to London, then to Amsterdam, and so from port 
to port, selling and bujdng, until at last he was to go to 
Mocha, buy coftee and turn back. At London, how- 
ever, the young fellow was charged by the Barings not 
to go to Mocha, or he would fall into the hands of 
pirates ; at Amsterdam they told him the same thing ; 
everywhere the caution was repeated ; but he sailed on 
until he came to the last port before Mocha. Here he 
was consigned to a merchant who had been an appren- 
tice to Girard in Philadelphia — for this happened when 
Girard was an old and rich man — and he too told him 
he must not dare venture near the Red Sea. The su- 
percargo was now in a dilemma. On one side was his 
master's order ; on the other, two vessels, a valuable 
cargo, a large amount of money. The merchant knew 
Girard's peculiarities as well as the supercargo did, but 
bethought the rule to "break* owners- , not orders," 



STEPHEN GIBABD. 495 

might this time be governed by discretion. "You'll 
not only lose all you have made," he said, "but you '11 
never go home to justify yourself." The young man 
reflected. After all, the object of his voyages was to 
get coflee, and there was no danger in going to Java, so 
he turned his prow, and away he sailed to the Chinese 
Seas. He bought coffee at four dollars a sack, and sold 
it in Amsterdam at a most enormous advance, and then 
went back to Philadelphia in good order, with large 
profits, sure of approval. Soon after he entered the 
counting-room Girard came in. He looked at the young 
fellow from under his bushy brows, and his one eye 
gleamed with resentment. He did not greet him nor 
welcome him nor congratulate him, but, shaking his 
angry hand, cried : " What for you not go to Mocha, 
sir?" And for the moment the supercargo wished he 
had ! But this was all Girard ever said on the subject. 
He rarely scolded his employes. He might express his 
opinion by cutting down a salary, and when a man did 
not suit him he dismissed him. He had no patience 
with incompetence, no time to educate people in 
business habits. Each man felt he was watched and 
weighed ; and as long as he did his best, and his best 
suited, he was treated justly, if closely. The master 
exacted honesty, soberness, punctuality, and allowed 
none of his plans to be thwarted by any independence 
on the part of his subordinates. They understood that 
they were to leave business in the office, so no one of 
them gossipped to his friends over Girard's affairs. 



496 A SYLVJJV CITY. 

In those days Philadelphia was the commercial port 
of the country. Along Water and Front Streets were 
shipping-offices ; the wharves were busy with vessels 
coming and going, and there was talk of China and 
Japan, of the Barbadoes, of wine and silks from France. 
The odors of tea and coffee hung heavy in the ware- 
houses, and no one complained because the Delaware 
was shallow, or the city miles up the river. Girard 
had found one of the best places in the world in which 
to build a fortune. Young as he was when he landed, 
he had both experience and knowledge. Back in his 
own family were the traditions and habits of fathers and 
sons who had been sailors and traders, and Stephen 
was born with instincts that never failed him. He knew 
where to sell and where to buy, and could calculate 
what would be the market prices hundreds of miles 
away and a year ahead. He understood possible 
dangers and provided for them, and his busy brain 
marshaled the world to do him service. His family, 
however, had no faith in his establishing himself in a 
young country struggling in a war with so great a 
power as England. 

In 1777 his brother Jean wrote to him from Cape 
Francois, that in every letter he receives from their 
father, he asks news of Stephen, "with, as I can well 
imagine, tears in his eyes," says the writer, and im- 
plores Jean to join him in persuading Stephen to quit 
a hazardous traffic, and either go to the Cape and with 
his brother there establish a house, or else accept from 



STEPHEN GIRARD. 499 

his father the command of a ship. Jean does urge this 
very strongly, but, in conclusion, shows how well he 
knows what Stephen's reply will be, by adding, that if 
his brother is absolutely resolved to stay where he is, 
he had better consign some vessels to him at once, as he 
is in a position to have them promptly dispatched. 
Stephen possibly sent the vessels, but he had faith and 
saw that under the struggle there was vigor and coming 
prosperity, and he stayed where he was. 

As he grew richer, the Water Street house became 
very comfortable, and if he did not rebuild he must 
have altered it thoroughly. He sent to the Isle of 
France for ebony, out of which he had his parlor furni- 
ture made ; he imported handsome Turkey carpets ; the 
French windows opened to the floor ; the kitchen was 
paved with marble and the water was brought in by 
pipes. In the store-room everything was in abundance : 
sacks of coffee, boxes of tea, apples, hams, chocolate, 
West-India preserves, so that the table was fully fur- 
nished. Girard himself ate no meat for years, but it was 
regularly on the table, which was set with much solid 
silver. There was always company staying to meals, and 
when distinguished Frenchmen were in the city nothing 
pleased Girard better than giving them a fine dinner — 
and among them often came Joseph Bonaparte. The 
counting-room was under the same roof, and after the 
nieces grew up and lived in the house, the young clerks 
made little errands to the parlor when they knew 
the master was out. There was a small French organ 



500 A STL VAN CITY. 

in the room, which tliey would wind up, and have 
many a hurried dance when tliey were supposed to be 
busy over tlieir books. The nieces had to be on the 
watch to secure their girhsh pleasures. Their uncle was 
never unkind, but he saw no use in any sort of amuse- 
ment. Everybody in the house, except himself, had to go 
to church, and each to his own. He provided the pews, 
and the family was expected to occupy them ; but for 
parties and such enjtertainments he had only contempt, 
At ten o'clock the house was closed, and every one 
sent to bed. But every one did not go to bed, and more 
than once one of the girls, in her gala dress, slipped softly 
down the stairs and out the door to a cavalier, who took 
her to one of the statel}^ parties of the time ; and then at 
some late hour there was the waking of the housekeeper, 
and the stealing back again. There was no lack of life 
in the house, and when Girard could get a child into the 
circle, even as a visitor, he was very happy. He liked 
young girls and children and canary birds well, but 
best of all he liked his farm down in "The Neck." 
Every day, in his yellow gig, Girard drove down there, 
and then took off his coat and went to work. He 
hoed and he pruned, he looked after his fruit and his 
stock, and M'^hen his own table was supplied he found 
it easy to sell at a good profit whatever he chose to 
send to market, and so not only took his relaxation and 
exercise on his farm but added it to his money-making 
ventures. 
In the midst of this personal prosperity, and just as 



STEPHEN OIRARD. 



501 



Philadelphia was fairly recovering from the unsettled 
conditions that followed the war, the yellow fever broke 
out and desolated the city. Washington, with all his 
officials, moved the government offices to Germantown ; 
every one who could fled, and, flying, carried the con- 
tagion into the country places near Philadelphia. Those 




MODEL OF THE " MONTESQUIETT " IN BALCONY RAILING. 

who stayed lived in hourly fear, and hurried through 
the streets like so many monks of La Trappe under 
vows to neither touch nor speak to another fellow-being. 
From every house where people dwelt came the odors 
of burning tobacco or tar, or some similar substances. 
Churches were closed, the books in the Philadelphia 
Library safely locked up ; there was no brawling at the 
taverns, and people hardly dared to even meet to pray 



502 A SYLVAN CITY. 



together. The death-calls echoed through the silent, 
grass-grown streets, and at night the watcher would 
hear at his neighbor's door the cry, "Bring out your 
dead !" And the dead were brought ; unwept over, 
unprayed for, they were wrapped in the sheet in which 
they died, and were hurried into a box and thrown into 
a great pit, rich and poor together. This was in 1793, 
and all summer the plague raged, until, when Septem- 
ber came, the city lay under the blazing sun as under a 
great curse. Doctors were dead, nurses had broken 
down and gone away; there were no visitors of the 
poor, and even at the hospital at Bush Hill there was 
no one to receive or care for the victims who were car- 
ried there. No one could be hired to go there. Why 
should any one give his life for nothing ? A meeting 
was called, and a few men came together and appointed 
a committee to devise help for the hospital. Stephen 
Girard was on this committee. He had not only stayed 
in the city but he had given himself up to nursing and 
doctoring. He went from house to house ; he was never 
too wearied ; he was never disheartened nor disgusted. 
He gave money, and commissioned others to give it for 
him, "except," he said to an old Quaker, ''''you shall 
not give to Frenchmen, because you like them not. 
You shall send them to me I" It was only a step farther 
for him to volunteer to go to Bush Hill and take charge. 
And he did so. He was there for two months. He 
received the fever patients at the gate ; sometimes he 
went after them ; he nursed them and never faltered ; 



STEPHEN GIRARD. 



503 



he watched until they breathed their last breath, and 
then, wrapping them in whatever he could find, helped 
carry them out and put 
them in the pit. He was 
then forty-three years 
old, and his family in 
France were terrified at 
what Jean calls, in his 
English, the "riscks" 
he was running. In 
1797 and 1798, Girard 
repeated this experi- 
ence, and again nursed 
and doctored through 
those summers of pesti- 
lence, and lost, he wrote 
to one of his friends, 
but one patient, an 
Irishman, Mdio would 
drink liquor. 
And so the years went pmrre girard's cross of st. louis. 

on, and the Frenchman prospered, and another chance 
came for him to do another great public work. In 
1811 Girard had a million of dollars to his account in 
the bank of the Barings Brothers. He ordered the 
whole of this spent in buying the stock of the United 
States Bank. This institution had come to the limit 
of its charter, and the stock was greatly depreciated 
in England. Still, Girard bought it, and waited a 




504 A SYLVAN CITY. 



little. The charter expired, the government refused 
to renew it, and then Girard bought the whole affair, 
the building (which still stands on Third Street), the 
paper on which the notes were printed, the stools on 
which the clerks sat ; and so the merchant became a 
banker, and in a moment of national peril, just as we 
were on the eve of war, saved us from a financial crisis. 
It was also one of those splendid business achievements 
that distinguished Girard. He took his money out of 
danger and made a good investment, and when com- 
merce was closing, opened a new business under capital 
conditions. From this moment he was the steady right 
hand of the government. He believed in it, and was 
in a position to assert his belief. In 1816 the new 
United States Bank was established, and stock offered 
at seven per cent, with twenty dollars bonus. The 
people hesitated ; they straggled in, and at last took 
twenty thousand dollars' worth. They were not sure 
about government investments. Girard waited until 
the last day, when he came forward and took all the 
stock — three million one hundred thousand dollars. 
This was his stake, his '•' risck." 

Of course, both parties made money. The govern- 
ment, backed by Girard 's name, tided over the perils in 
its way, and Girard had the benefit of its success. He 
not only knew how and when to make his ventures, but 
once made he looked after them. When he saw fatal 
weakness he took no interest ; yet in the moment of 
danger no one knew better how to run even a sinking 



STEPHEN GIRARD. 505 

craft on shore — but the cargo had to be worth the 
trouble. 

In December, 1831, Girard died, an old man nearly 
eighty-two. For some time he had been very infirm, 
and his weakness had been increased by having been 
knocked down by a cart on the street, and having his 
head and face injured. He would not give up to his 
injuries, and even when attacked by the influenza in- 
sisted on his old practice of doctoring himself, until it 
was too late. The day he died he got out of bed and 
M^alked across the room to a chair, but at once turned 
and went feebly back again. He put his old, thin hand 
on his head and said, "How violent is this disorder !" 
and died. 

There was, of course, instant interest in his will, it 
being generally understood that he had left his millions 
for public uses. Through a misapprehension on the 
part of one of his executors in regard to Girard 's 
wishes in relation to his burial place, the will had to 
be read very soon after his death, and so the public 
was soon in possession of the facts. The people whom 
he liked best were the Quakers. He had sympathy with 
their disdain of forms, their shrewd business habits and 
their integrity. In his own dress he was as neat and 
particular as they were, and did not look unlike them. 
His plain coats were made of the best broadcloth ; his 
underwear, of silk, was imported from China. He kept 
a pair of shoes for each day of the week, and his nieces 
hemmed his square linen cravats by the dozen. The 



506 A SYLVAN CITY. 

portrait we give of him is from the statue at Girard 
College, which was modeled from a cast taken after 
death, and so represents him as an old man. It 
was executed in Italy by Gavelet, at an expense of 
$30,000, and was universally pronounced an excellent 
likeness. 

The time will come when Stephen Girard will be bet- 
ter understood ; and even while he remains the typical 
man of business — allowing nothing to move him from 
his purposes, inflexible, impetuous, never taking back 
his word for good or ill, daring yet cautious, having a 
brain that governed his heart — he will also have credit 
for his sterling, manly virtues. He was one of the men 
to whom much was committed, and when his time came 
to give it up, he gave it, not as money to make money, 
but to the " little ones" with widowed mothers, and for 
the benefit of the city of his adoption. 



[the end.] 



Hm 100 89;4 










'fU.^^i 




A<^^ 



'■ 1 




•^ov^ 



<> •. -^ *••• A^ 




« • o 













^O 



-ov^^ 



• • ■ 





« • o. 



1. « « "^ a\ ^^ ' • • • * W V3^ * • » 




H°<. 









i^°^ 



,0 '^ 



























/\ 




1 *v> v^ 



.-lO^ 















♦:*^'^«' ^ ^o 








W M \ » ♦ • 




5. 



HECKMAN 

BINDERY INC 

AUG 89 







^_^ N. MANCHESTER, 

'^sas^ INDIANA 46962 










